


Reptiles

by voxDei



Category: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, first person pov is hard, kinda gross if that bothers you, road trip with escaped alien, skin shedding, taking liberties with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-07-19 22:30:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7379989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxDei/pseuds/voxDei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To progress, they had to capture an invader.</p><p>They captured me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a vague late night idea born of marathoning both xcom games one after the other and now I'm not sure what to do with it. Tags and warnings are probably subject to change if I do add more.
> 
> (Also for this I'm operating a bit to the left of canon wrt alien biology, cause the vipers are all female (which they say is for population control but really as if there aren't reptile species that can breed just fine with no males) so it would make sense that the thin men are female too, cause why engineer a Y chromosome when you don't need one, just make them look like human guys and that's all you need, so their idea of gender is a bit skewed from typical human ideas. Also viper boobs are venom sacs, because I'm not sure if anyone at firaxis games knows what a reptile is, really.)

It’s not all that bad, all things considered. There is food, and warmth, and they don’t seem about to kill me just yet. They have enough corpses to study, I’ve seen them.

They were surprised when I spoke. I had thought they would have made that conclusion on their own, that an infiltration unit would necessarily have to communicate with its targets, but then again, they don’t seem all that smart. They have designations for one another, but they call me just “the alien,” or “thin man.” I haven’t bothered to correct them. I’m not sure if I have another designation anymore. 

It’s too dry in here for my liking, and it makes my skin itch. Past due for a shed. They make divisions among themselves based on physical differences, calling each other man and woman, which doesn’t make much sense to me. They’re all the same species, why would they care about small variations? Even our mothers still raised us with the rest of the brood, never mind differences in limb and skin and face. 

Our mothers looked very different from us.

I’ve seen myself reflected in the glass, and in their round eyes. Thin face, thin body, walking gracelessly, none of the curves or coils I should have had. Mouth too small to swallow anything whole, and chewing food is difficult with small pointed teeth. I am given to believe they have grinding teeth, these people, though I have never gotten close enough to see them. That must make it easier. 

They took away my glasses the first day, and the lights have hurt my eyes ever since. 

I yawn, widely, and see the humans working nearest flinch. I click my jaw back into place and swallow; they’ve reacted badly when they’ve felt threatened in the past. I’d rather not be reduced to begging for my life again, once was humiliating enough. I’m not sure if they feel for me, or if it is simply more convenient to keep a live specimen. I know which it would be if our positions were reversed. 

One of them approaches the glass. “Hey, alien?”

“Yes?” My voice is dry from lack of use, and beyond that dry to begin with. No one would call me a singer.

“You keep scratching.”

I pull my hand back down from where I had been scraping blunt nails against the back of my neck. “Yes.”

“Are you sick or something?”

I tilt my head slightly. “I am not.”

“Then what’s got you itchy?”

A slow blink, another head tilt in the other direction. “Are you concerned?”

“Call it curious.”

Hm. “Arrange for a water bath, and I will tell you.”

That gets a bewildered look, a bit skeptical. “…you want a bath.”

I blink again. “Yes. Warm.”

The human hums slightly, and turns to go.

 

——————————

 

I am ordered to the other side of my cell while they wheel in an open empty container and pump in gently steaming water. I stand still and watch, patient. It is nothing like the baths my mother would talk about sometimes, from our home; those, she said, were huge and luxurious, with servants wielding scented oils and scale brushes. This is a crate a quarter full of plain cooling water. 

But it’s good enough. My mother also said that there were few baths left, now, and that too many people were soldiers now to have time for them.

The humans leave, the hiss and clatter of locks announcing that it’s safe for me to approach the makeshift tub. The water is warm to the touch and it’s easy enough to slip out of the suit and into the water, sighing softly. It’s deep enough that I can submerge most of myself, and I do so eagerly. It soaks into my dry skin and after ten minutes it begins to loosen properly. I roll, trying to get an even coverage, and lift an arm over the side, splaying long fingers.

“Shedding,” I say to whoever is monitoring me, fulfilling my end of the bargain, “is necessary for our health, and it cannot occur in a dry environment.” I start to scrape at my arm lightly, causing the loose outer layer to separate more fully from the new skin below. “A warm soak may assist in detaching shed that cannot happen naturally.”

I do not pay attention to the humans outside, and instead focus on shedding. It takes time, and patience, both of which I seem to have in abundance; it’s a half hour before I can start peeling off strips of shed skin. But after that long they come easily, revealing fresh, new skin below, soft and brighter in color, and it makes me sigh in relief. My face comes off in one solid piece, and I yawn to stretch the new skin. I look the same, I haven’t grown a new face under the old, it just feels better to have the tight, dry skin off finally.

I lay in the water a few minutes more, once it’s completed, the water gone tepid, almost cold. My new skin will be tender and prone to drying out for a few days, but there’s nothing that can be done about that here. I will manage. 

(This body aches, sometimes, pains in my abdomen and throat. Venom sacs too small on my chest for more than a pitiful burst of poison, organs rearranged from what I was supposed to be. I am not a perfect imitation of humanity, and I think my creators may have gotten a few things wrong with the making of us. There are dissimilarities between our camouflaged selves and what we are meant to be camouflaged as, our bodies are different. Perhaps they would have had more luck disguising us to fill some other niche in human society; we do not match White Affluent Male well enough.)

Finally, I heave myself up and out, dripping damp and tender against the air of my containment cell. They have left me a luxury: a length of cloth meant for drying. I take it and sop up the moisture left on my skin, a pile of pale shed lying next to the crate. Ordinarily I would eat it, but I have a feeling they may appreciate it if I leave it for them to study. 

Having no other clothes, I put back on the suit my creators had dressed me in. It fits, and is comfortable in its familiarity. I leave off the jacket and tie, for now, breathing easier, and I stand still while they come to retrieve the crate. There’s some squabbling, apparently over who has to collect the pile of shed skin; the loser seems vaguely disgusted, holding it gingerly at arms length. I blink, and say nothing.

They leave and seal me in again, and I sit against the glass wall, more relaxed than I had been. My new skin is soft and sensitive, and I lose a few minutes flexing my hands, getting used to the new sensation. My hair is mussed and wet, out of its combed pattern, but I don’t bother to put it back right. A lot of enforced habits can be discarded now. I glance out at my captors, watching them mill around at their work. The human from earlier, who had presumably negotiated for my bath, is communicating with the human I believe to be their lead scientist. I had never been very good at interpreting human faces, at least from a distance, so I cannot guess as to what they’re talking about. Probably me. But in what capacity, I know not.

 

———————————

 

Time is virtually meaningless here, I cannot tell how long it is before they interrogate me again, and I cannot tell how long it is after that that the sirens start.

I flinch at the sound, one arm held protectively close to my chest, the once-soft skin there striped in greenish wheals now, painful to the touch. It takes me a moment to register what the sirens mean, I had never heard them here before. But they must mean something, and something bad, the humans outside are abandoning their workstations in a panic. I sit up slightly straighter, watching them. Something makes the floor shake, a sound that could be tearing metal or some deep vocalization reverberates from below, the shaking getting more intense. 

I stand up hastily, wincing as the movement pulls some tender spots. They had not been gentle with me, pressing for more information I didn’t have. As if my creators would have told a spy their most intimate plans and methods. There’s yelling behind walls, sounds of fighting, and I’m starting to get nervous. What if there’s an internal schism I missed? What if the invasion has launched a direct attack on the facility? Either way I won’t be safe, certainly not in a glass jar. I have to be ready to run, if and when the opportunity presents itself.

The shoes I had been assigned are uncomfortable, and I’d preferred to leave them off while in captivity. It takes agonizing minutes of fumbling to get them on, while the commotion gets much too close for comfort. I’m still sitting, barely getting the second one on, when the nearest wall cracks and crumbles, bursting through into a hulking shape and oh, no, they tried to bring in a _berserker_. Why! Why would they do that!

A rain of bullets pepper the beast, pinging sharply off the glass of my prison, and I yelp and scramble back against the far wall. They’ll never bring it down like that, and sure enough it bellows rage and hurls a chunk of concrete back through the hole in the wall, yielding a few crunches and more yelling. The beast turns to scan the new room it’s found itself in, beady little eyes sweeping the area, and a few of the soldiers behind it get wise and hurl grenades at its bulk, two bursting against it and making it stagger, the third arcing over, a badly aimed throw.

My focus narrows to that single object, sailing serenely through the air as if it's anything but a handheld explosive, over the berserker’s head and bouncing off the glass of my cell, spinning… and detonating in a deafening boom that sends spiderweb cracks racing through the curved glass. I stare, stunned between fear and hope, and then gravity wins and the glass falls through, showering the ground with fragmented shards.

Amazingly, astonishingly, the soldiers haven’t noticed. The berserker roars again and charges back at them through the hole in the wall, gunfire and screams following, and I can’t stop and think about whether this is a good idea or not before I’m bounding out and over the jagged rim of glass, landing amid shards of glass and sprinting fast. I can move quite quickly if I have to, and I most definitely have to right now. I’m out of the lab and bolting down a corridor before I can take stock of my surroundings, begin to formulate a plan. Unarmed, but there’s no point in seeking out a weapon, I’m outnumbered and in the heart of their stronghold, if I’m found I’m dead. 

Solution: don’t be found.

I keep moving, quietly as I can, trying to make my way up. All I know about this place is that it’s underground, sunken and infinitely well defended, so to get out I need to get to the top. I climb ladders wherever I find them, left arm burning with effort, and when I hear voices or footsteps I move as fast as I can in the opposite direction. I’m well and truly lost, with no way of knowing how close I am to an exit, or even if there is an exit from this place. Panic lodges itself in my chest, making my breath come ragged and sharp, and when a shout comes from a side corridor my throat closes completely.

“Fuck, the snake got out!”

I bolt, racing down and away but there are heavy footsteps following me now, and they know this place so much better than I do. A fact which is painfully displayed to me when I turn a corner to be met with a dead end, an abandoned workstation apparently for expanding the base into the surrounding bedrock. The soldier catches up and my back’s against the wall, nowhere left to run, hearts pounding in my chest so hard they might burst. A hateful sneer, a gun barrel, and I raise my arms over my face waiting to die but not wanting to, never wanting to, _I don’t want—_

A crack, a heavy thump, and silence.

I keep my eyes closed, sure it has to be a trick, some new hellish trap, but there’s nothing. Then something touches my arm and I jump, nearly flailing out in panic.

“Hey, hey chill.”

I gape, pressed flat against the wall. The scientist who spoke to me, with, with the bath, is standing there, one arm outstretched, and behind them — her? I think it’s a her, she displays vaguely female physical features, average height with brownish hair tied back — the prostrate body of the soldier, bleeding from a head wound and face down. There’s some variety of heavy-looking scientific device on the ground, presumably the bludgeoning object. I’m at a loss to explain what just happened. 

The scientist grabs my arm — the uninjured one, thankfully — and pulls me quickly out and down another corridor. It’s fortunate my legs are cooperating because my brain sure isn’t, that part of me is busy trying to conceive of any reason a human would want to help me. 

She shoves me into a small room off a larger corridor and bolts the door, hurrying to a shelf and chucking a ball of fabric at me. “Put that on.”

I fumble with it, some variety of outer garment, and try to marshal my throat to work. “…why?”

She tisks, throwing handfuls of items into a satchel. “You’re too distinctive like that, a hoodie’ll make it easier.”

“No, I—” I swallow, suddenly unsteady on my feet. “Why did you do that?”

She pauses, brow furrowed. Distressed, I think. “…we can worry about that later.”

Can we? I don’t argue, fiddling with the garment she’d given me and struggling it on. Thick grey fabric, and something like an aborted sleeve for my head to fit into. Peripheral vision is a bit impaired, and it muffles sound, but that doesn’t seem like too great a price for further concealment. The scientist slings her pack over her shoulder and goes to the door, waits a tense thirty seconds for heavy footsteps to pass and dwindle, then snaps it open and rushes out. I follow close behind, fear still heavy in my throat, wondering again if this isn’t some trap, if I am stupid for trusting this person. 

But it’s not like I have a better option. If I follow her I might die. If I stay here I will definitely die.

It takes ten anxious minutes of running and pausing at crossways, listening for footsteps and voices, before the scientist clambers up a long ladder into the ceiling, beckoning me after her. At the top of it she struggles to turn a hatch, the floor a good twenty feet below us, and then the hatch cracks open, cool air wafting down and smelling of dust and earth. My hearts lurch, hands very tight on the rungs of the ladder, and she shoves it open all the way and scrambles up and out, whispering back at me, “Come on, hurry.”

I climb the last few feet, face upturned, and I emerge out under a sky bursting with stars. They almost blur together into a vast pale mass, impossible to see clearly and stark against the darkness of the world, and for a moment my throat gets tight with longing for a home I never knew, that must still be out there, somewhere.

Then the scientist grabs the back of my hoodie and yanks me the rest of the way out, scrambling to her feet. “You can stargaze later, we’ve got maybe a half hour at most before they start looking out here, we gotta make it count.”

My throat spasms and I nod, following her quickly over rough unfinished ground, dotted with scrub and looming, stationary shapes. Cactuses, my mind helpfully supplies. This is a desert. A breeze picks up, dry and cool with night air, and I have to blink to moisten my eyes.

I look back once, and I can’t even pick out the spot we emerged from. The night is absolute, save for the glittering lights above.


	2. Chapter 2

At some point during the night we find a small depression in a jagged rock formation, barely worthy to be called a cave, and exhaustion lead us to sleeping there. We had not been chased out of the facility, no pursuers had come bounding out after us in the night, and the human scientist is confident that we cannot be seen from the air. 

The stone is chilly from the night air and I am grateful for the hoodie she’d given me; further insulation to help save my meager body heat, and it keeps most of the wind off my skin. I hunker down in it, curled against a small rock. It’s still chilly, even with the extra fabric, and I glance over at her, using her pack as a place to rest her head. Humans run hot, I remember, quick mammal metabolisms keeping them warm. And communal sleeping is a thing mammals do, I think, a behavior to reinforce bonds.

But I am not a mammal, not of her community. There is no reason for there to be a bond between us to reinforce. Even the fact that she’s sleeping near me, someone who is for all intents and purposes her enemy, shows a level of… something. Trust seems too strong a word, but she doesn’t seem stupid to me. It doesn’t make sense. But whatever it is, I can’t risk jeopardizing it, as it seems to be the only thing keeping me safe out here. I close my eyes, exhaling slowly.

Light wakes me.

Bright, yellow sunlight, warm and glimmering. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, and once they do I see the desert properly, lit up and shimmering with hot air. I draw in a deep breath, filling my sinuses with the smell of baked earth and plant life. Something moves on the rock I had been resting my head on, and I twitch my head to look at it. A pale insect, almost matching the color of the stone and as long as my finger, moving with careful steps. I don’t know what it is; insect life was not one of the subjects covered in my education.

It’s too slow to get away when I grab for it, and its shell is pleasingly crunchy, warmed by the sun. It doesn’t taste half bad, considering.

“Okay, ew, we’re getting you real food.”

I look over, almost surprised. The scientist is rifling through her bag, with an expression I can’t read. I swallow what’s left in my mouth, a bit bewildered.

“And of course I grab the damn photo album and not a decent snack, there’s nothing in here! Ugh, what was I thinking.”

I try to stretch out my shoulders while still sitting, quiet. I have nothing to say; indeed, I am also wondering what she was thinking last night. Wondering what her plan is now. She runs a hand through her hair and stands abruptly, wobbling a bit. “Ach, stiff legs… okay, according to memory and google maps, there’s a gas station maybe half a mile that way,” she gestures off to the left, towards a line in the distance that may be a road. “And we can probably buy food and figure out our plan of action there. That sound good?”

I look up at her and nod, giving a soft “yes,” and she nods back and stretches her arms over her head. I can hear the joints in her back cracking.

I stand too and oh, my legs are stiff too. They ache as I stretch them, a low burn in my muscles, and it takes a few steps to get my stride right. 

It’s a long, hot walk, our steps kicking up small clouds of dust. The heat doesn’t bother me much, even with the extra layers on, and I keep the hood up to shield my eyes, but I can smell sweat from the scientist and after two hours her gait is sluggish and worn, lagging behind me. I pause, looking back at her, vaguely concerned. She’s stopped for breath, hands on her knees and breathing heavily. 

“Do you need help?”

She laughs a bit, wiping her face with her sleeve. “Not unless you’re hiding a canteen of ice water somewhere.” She waves a hand. “I’ll be fine, we’re almost there.”

I turn my head to scan the horizon, and see that the road has gotten rather close, not more than a hundred yards. Just beyond it is a squat, one story building with gas pumps in the front. The scientist straightens up, taking a few steps so she’s next to me. “Actually, we should probably plan now. I think you gotta hang back for this, we’re so close to the base everyone here knows what to watch out for with you guys, we’ll get found out.” She shrugs, possibly apologetic. I nod; her reasoning makes sense. She gestures to a rock formation nearer the road. “You can wait by there, I don’t think they’d see you if you’re behind it.” Another nod from me. She nods back, seeming nervous, and takes a deep breath. “Okay then, here goes.”

She starts walking again, towards the gas station, and I change course towards the rocks she’d indicated. There’s shade, there, and by the time I reach them she’s almost at the road. I sit down with my back to the stones, facing the way we’d come, and try to sort out what my gut is doing.

This… honestly, I don’t know what’s going to happen next. The scientist will get food, and presumably we’ll keep walking, and then… I don’t know what. We’ll reach a city sooner or later, although in this environment I’m not sure how far we can realistically go. But after that? I could… I could go back. Surely I have valuable intel now, I know where their headquarters is. I even have someone I could take to give to them, someone who must know more valuable things. Surely this could be the ultimate end to any infiltration mission.

My brow furrows, looking at nothing. But to what end? What do the masters have to reward me with? Glory, riches, maybe, or maybe they wouldn’t care, and would just discard me like they did all the others. But if I run from them, if I take this information and do nothing with it, they will find me, and the consequences of that…

I shudder, a tendril of fear coiling round my brain stem. If they find me they will do horrible things to me.

So. The solution is the same as fleeing the base: don’t get caught. 

But if I take that path I will have to commit to it wholly, there’s no going back, even if I volunteer the intel the outcome will be the same. And I’m not sure I’m ready to do that, to dedicate my life to hiding from the masters on this planet that they will conquer anyway. Maybe I could do it, if I am very very lucky.

So far, I have not been very very lucky.

A sharp, harsh sound breaks me out of my thoughts, startling me up. It sounds again, a car horn. I peek out from behind the rock formation, and see a red pickup truck on the road a few yards away. The scientist leans out the driver’s side window and waves, making beckoning motions. I swallow my surprise and hurry out, sprinting the distance to the road and around to the passenger side.

She steps on the gas as soon as the door’s closed, jolting us back and shooting down the road. I swallow a yelp and fumble with the seatbelt; cars, at least, I understand in a rudimentary sense, they’re so common in human urban centers that it’s a necessity to know about them. 

It’s a quiet few minutes, broken only by the rumble of the engine as the gas station rapidly fades behind us. Then the scientist laughs, hectic and uncontrollable. “Fuck!”

I blink. She almost rests her forehead against the wheel, then jerks back up as if remembering she’s still driving. “Fuck, I. I really didn’t think that would work.”

There’s a tangle of exposed wires under the steering column, and no key in the ignition. “You stole it?”

She laughs again, expression too tangled to read. “It was just there and I figured… I didn’t even think it would work, I got the instructions off the internet. Why would they have legit instructions that come up when you search ‘how do I hotwire a car,’ like come on google, that can’t be safe.” She groans, still half laughing. “It’s a miracle we made it out.”

It’s a miracle I escaped my cell in the first place. She’s shaking her head now, disbelieving. “Christ, it was stupid of me. We’re gonna get caught for sure, now, and I don’t know if the guy at the counter recognized me, but hardly anyone comes by here except people working for Xcom.”

“I think it was brave.”

“What, really?”

Not that I’ve had much experience with bravery, but. “Yes.”

She laughs again and the car jolts forward as she guns the gas. “Oh, hey, I got these.” She reaches back behind my seat and drops a plastic bag of foodstuffs into my lap. “Take what you want, these I at least paid for properly. With cash, so they can’t track us.”

There’s a variety of snack foods in there, plastic wrapped processed things I have never eaten before, and three big bottles of water. I take one of these and down half of it, then after a moment I offer the scientist the other half. Her mouth curves up in a smile. “Nah, I already had a whole one. Gonna need a pee break in an hour, but I’ll try to put as much distance behind us before then. But thanks.”

I nod and cap the bottle again, then pick through the bag of snacks. I’m… not actually sure what I can eat here. Usually our diet is meat and fruit, I’ve never tried anything like this. I hesitantly pick out a candy bar, figuring something sweet couldn’t hurt.

Pros of this decision: it tastes very very good, and is gone within thirty seconds. Cons of this decision: I spend the next hour vibrating in my seat, limbs twitching from the glucose. It’s enough to get worried looks from the scientist, and when she pulls over to a group of trees for a bathroom break I have to get out and pace furrows in the grass to burn off the energy. I feel jittery and on edge and when we get back in the car she passes me a bag of corn chips. “Here, starch’ll soak up some of the sugar and even things out, I hope.”

The corn chips are very salty and too brittle to chew comfortably, shards of them pricking my mouth, and I drink the other half of the water bottle to wash them down. They do seem to help, though, or else the sugar had already burned itself out, and I feel much better. The scientist keeps driving through the day, stopping once more for more food — I huddle down in the car, hood up and trying to look inconspicuous — and then on again. The roads are getting wider, the landscape more populous, but no one’s tried to pull us over or chase us down, and I can finally start to relax. The scientist puts on the radio, to check for news and then for music, and I find myself drifting, lulled by the motion of the car and the passing landscape. 

At nightfall, the sky bruise-purple around the edges, she pulls over at a small rest stop, leaning back in her seat. “Christ… I don’t think I’ve ever driven that far before, I’m wiped.”

“I can take over, if you like.”

She looks surprised. “You can drive?”

“In theory.” It had been part of my education, learning to operate earth vehicles, but I’d never had the chance to put it into practice. The scientist snorts. 

“Might wanna wait until daylight to try it out then, we can sleep here for tonight.”

I can see fine in the dark, better than she can probably, but I don’t argue. She gets out to use the restroom and buy dinner from a vendor just closing up his stall. She comes back with four hot dogs, and I devour mine; spiced meat is delicious, and breaks apart easily against my teeth in a way the chips hadn’t. She washes hers down with another bottle of water and reclines her seat as far back as it will go, sighing deeply. I do the same, laying myself relatively flat and curling over onto my side. Sleep comes easily, after a day spent running from two armies at once. 

I wake up to moonlight, pale white and shining in the window behind me, illuminating the scientist’s back. She’d rolled over, and I can hear faint sniffling sounds. I hesitate a moment, puzzled, then reach for her arm.

She turns her head and sees me, making me jerk my arm back. She swears under her breath and wipes at her eyes; they glisten slightly in the light, damp. There’s a faint smell of salt.

“Are you hurt?”

She laughs a bit, without joy. “Not… not exactly.” 

I say nothing, wondering if I shouldn’t have bothered her.

“I just… I didn’t think I’d ever do stuff like this, you know? Stealing cars, escaping from the military, that’s never… I mean, it was always pretty cool to think about. Action movies, and all. But I never…” She scrubs at her eyes again. “I’ve never even shoplifted before! I never thought I’d be doing stuff like this. And now I’m on the lam with an escaped alien! It’s absurd!”

I swallow, unprepared for all this. She makes that sound again, sniffling, and I take a breath. “I had thought I would do what I was meant for and return, that it would be simple. I didn’t anticipate being captured, and I didn’t anticipate escaping like this. But if we are caught, by your people or mine, I will be killed.”

She’s looking at me, unblinking, and I find it hard to meet her eyes. Talking for this long is proving difficult. “You didn’t have to do what you did, you could have let me die. I am… very grateful that you didn’t.” Another breath, steadying. “I don’t know where we are going, or what we will do when we get there, but I am glad to have made it this far.”

She blinks at me, then smiles slightly, strange on her sad face. “I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say at once.”

“Human words can be hard.”

She tries to laugh, and grabs my hand quick enough to startle me, squeezing my fingers lightly. “I think I like you, alien. Suppose an escape road trip will do that.” Something makes her expression shift. “Wait, you’ve gotta have a name right? Shit, I can’t believe I didn’t ask before.”

“I… did. I think I still do.”

“Well what is it?”

I make the hissing sound that was used to refer to me before I came here, a few syllables of air pushed through teeth and throat.

Her brow furrows. “Shit, I’m never gonna be able to say that.”

“I had thought as much.”

“Gotta find you a nickname, I can’t just keep calling you ‘alien,’ that seems so rude.”

I tilt my head, watching her think. She mutters, “Jerald, christ no, not Slendy, not Aliena, that’s just not trying, and it’s feminine…”

I wonder if I should point out that I’m not properly male, so gendered names shouldn’t make a difference, but she’s moving on. “We called the autopsy project ‘Viperus’ so… Perus? Paris!”

“The city?”

She waves a hand. “People have been named it too. What do you think?”

I tilt my head the other way, considering. “Paarissss,” I say, testing it out, exaggerating the soft ‘ah’ and the hiss on the end. It’s… not too bad. Seems human enough, probably wouldn’t attract suspicion. I decide I don’t mind it. I nod. “Paris.”

She grins, face dry now. “I like it!” She squeezes my hand again, startlingly warm and soft. “I’m Jodie.”

I blink, caught off guard. Somehow it hadn’t even occurred to me to think about her name, occupied as I was with thoughts of my uncertain future. I repeat it carefully, making sure to get the consonants right. She smiles and pats my arm with her other hand, a gesture of human companionship that still makes me startle a bit. 

“Now if I can get my brain to shut up we might be able to get some more sleep, I’ve got half an idea of where to go and with any luck we can fill in the other half on the road.”

I nod and she pulls her arms back, settling back into a relaxed comma shape. I turn my head to look at the moon again, then I make myself settle back down, trying to put my tangled feelings out of my mind.

Paris. I can live with that. Assuming I live very long after this, that is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's more of this now. Hooray!


	3. Chapter 3

[JK]: so bit of an emergency happened, and I may need to crash at your place for a few days  
[DN]: What did you do  
[JK]: who says I did anything?  
[DN]: Your words bleed guilt  
[JK]: ok I may have done something but I totally didn’t plan it! it just sorta happened!   
[JK]: also it’s not just gonna be me, I’ve got a friend with me  
[DN]: Ugh fine  
[DN]: Invade my home life why don’t you  
[DN]: Not like I’ve got Top Secret Space Things happening or anything  
[JK]: I knew I could count on you  
[DN]: Just warn your friend ahead of time that they’ll be sharing a room with Juno  
[DN]: I don’t want another freakout like last time  
[JK]: yeeeaaaaah I don’t think your snake is gonna be a problem tbh  
[JK]: gotta drive now, see you tomorrow hopefully!  
[JK]: <3

 

Jodie’s half an idea had grown into a full idea overnight, and we detour through some side roads and small towns to get to another highway. I’m starting to get cramped and jittery from sitting still for so long, so Jodie lets me try driving to give me something to do, and to let her rest. I don’t do half bad, considering. 

We’re going north, she says. She’s got an address, and her phone tells us where to go. The landscape gets less flat, more mountainous, but stays just as dry. A few groups of trees here and there, some hills of grass like hair, but mostly just dry, cracked ground in various configurations. I keep driving until she offers to take over again, and then I sleep in the passenger seat.

There’s no sign anyone’s coming after us.

It starts to feel surreal, like a dream or a trap. How can no one be coming after us? They must know we’re gone, the humans wouldn’t just let a captive walk off with one of their own people. Why aren’t they trying to get us back? Or are they trying to get us back and just haven’t made their move yet? 

As for my side… I’m not anticipating running into any others unless we go straight through an abduction zone, which will be entirely up to the hands of fate. Not like I know when or where they’re going to be, only the handful I was assigned to. I glance at the car radio. Maybe I could tweak it to pick up trans-atmospheric transmissions, that might give us some hints for places to avoid. I propose the idea at the next rest stop.

Jodie perks up slightly. “For real? You can do that to a car radio?”

“I might, I’m not sure yet. I’ve never tried it before.”

“Hmm… well if it won’t mess with the engine it might be worth a try, give us some extra info to work with. You can fiddle with it when we crash for the night, okay?”

I nod, and we get back on the road.

A few hours later she pulls into a truck stop and buys dinner from a vending machine, muttering something about two days on nothing but junk food. In all honesty my insides aren’t feeling so well either — no pain, but a heavy feeling that’s getting uncomfortable. I don’t mention it. Most likely it’s the food, it’s so different from my usual diet. 

She rifles through the glove compartment and the space behind our seats, and hands me a half-empty toolbox and some bits of wire she found. She lays her seat back and I examine the radio, tools uncertainly in hand. 

An hour and a half later I have radio guts on my lap, one hand holding two wires together while my other twists a screwdriver half a centimeter at a time in the body of the radio, and my head tilted very carefully trying to hear what’s being transmitted. Maybe a quarter of it is a non-earth language, the rest being either empty static or fragments of French, but through careful twists of the screwdriver it’s gradually getting clearer. I’m starting to make out words.

My brow creases, tilting my head the other way. A handful of place names, only two of which I recognize, and neither near us. But there’s something that sounds like an order to step up the severity of attacks, choppy as it is through the car radio. Progress has been made, it seems. I’m not sure if I should be happy about that or not.

My stomach shifts and I wince, the motion twisting the screwdriver and making the radio lose the signal. I hiss a curse, trying to find it again, but all I pick up is static. Nothing to be done. I glance up out of the window, uneasy. Xcom can’t keep up, I know it. It’s only a matter of time.

——————————

In the morning we move on again, the road getting tiresome. Jodie says it should only be an hour or two more, which relieves me. My legs are very stiff from this long in the car, and at any moment I expect an ambush. Jodie drives us into a town full of low buildings, a wind farm on one side, and I sit still in my seat and try not to look out the windows. No need to give people here a reason to look too closely at me. 

She parks the truck on a side street and empties all our stuff out of it, leading me a few blocks down to a low complex of apartments. It should be too hot for a sweater, but the alternative is being far too distinctive for comfort, so I stick my hands in the pockets and keep my head down, not showing my nervousness. Jodie’s told me she’s got a friend from her graduate school here, that she should be able to help us figure out what to do next, but I’m apprehensive about involving other humans. Jodie’s benevolence was a fluke, an impossibly lucky thing to come across. The likelihood that whoever she’s taking me to will react the same way to me is next to nil. 

Nevertheless, she knocks at a first-story door and squeals happily when it opens, grabbing hold of the woman on the other side in an embrace. I stand to the side, awkwardly.

The woman squeezes her back, half a head shorter and more than a bit rounder than Jodie, and with hair a shade of blue I’m almost sure isn’t natural. “Christ, Jodie, you’re here bright and early, I’m not done setting up the air mattress yet. What’d you do, drive all this way from Roswell?” She cranes her neck, as if looking for a car. Jodie makes a dismissive gesture. 

“Kinda, it’s not important. Come on, it’s roasting out here.” The woman snorts and ushers us in, giving me an odd look. 

“Jodes, introduce us? And then maybe tell me what happened down there?”

“Right, um.” Jodie looks apprehensive, as if steeling herself. She gestures between us. “Paris, Dana. Dana, Paris. And, uh, what happened is… complicated.”

She steers the woman, Dana, into another room, leaving me in the entryway and mouthing back at me _it’ll be fine_. I feel like groaning in despair. It will not be fine.

——————————

It is not fine.

“Holy fuck. Holy shit, Jodes, how did you even do this! What possessed you!”

“It’s not that bad! One of their big smashy beasts was already loose and rampaging, we just slipped out. It’s not like I could have helped at all, I’m a non-com!”

“You brought an alien here!”

“He’s not dangerous!”

“It’s _an alien!_ As in the guys who are invading us and abducting people!”

“You owe me, I let you keep that rabbit in grad school.”

“A rabbit is not a creepy snakeman!”

“Even better, he’ll get along great with Juno!”

All of this I hear through the walls, sitting on the floor in the entryway and grimacing. I should never have let her take me here, I should have just gone my own way once we reached a large city. I could have hid properly there, waited out whatever was to come and try to find the energy to accept my fate. Now, this friend of hers will bring us to the human authorities, guaranteeing a more painful interrogation and punishment for me, and probably detainment or worse for Jodie. It was all for nothing.

All while this miserable train of thought ran its course in my head, there was shouting from the other room, conflict over my presence. Now the volume dims, sudden whispers replacing shouts. Against my better judgement, I crane my head against the wall to listen better. 

“You didn’t see him, Dana, it was awful. I mean I get it, it’s war, they’ve gotta do things in the field, but once they got him he was practically harmless, meek as anything! He barely fought back, he just looked… scared.”

“So you transfer to a different workstation and stop thinking about it, you don’t help an extraterrestrial escape! _Think_ , Jodes, this could be really really bad, now one of them knows where Xcom HQ is! _I_ don’t even know where Xcom HQ is, we just call it Roswell for kicks, I don’t think even the president knows where it really is! What if he runs straight back for the next landed UFO and spills everything?”

All valid concerns, really, and it surprises me that Jodie hadn’t even brought up the possibility in the time since we escaped. I can hear sighs and shuffling through the wall.

“I just… I spent three days with the guy, Dana, and I didn’t feel unsafe at all. If anything it seemed like he was scared of me. He’s unarmed, trust me, and he even told me that if the aliens find out he’s out, they’ll kill him, for some reason. I just don’t think he’s dangerous.”

Dana mutters something about _easy lies_ and _you wouldn’t feel unsafe around a wolverine_ , but doesn’t argue further. “…I just know I’m going to regret this, but okay. But if he makes one wrong move you’re both out on your asses, three strikes is too many.”

Jodie agrees, promising — rather optimistically, I feel — that I’ll be a perfect angel and that nothing bad will happen while we’re here. My hearts feel closer to my stomach than they should be, almost ill with nerves. The door opens and I jump, scrambling to my feet as the two of them come out into the hall. 

Dana looks at me distastefully. “What do you eat?”

I blink, caught off guard. “Most things, but I prefer meat.”

She snorts softly and walks down the hall, Jodie coming out after her and touching my arm. “We’re good for now, she’s gonna make us lunch.” I nod and follow them into the kitchen, obeying Dana’s directive to “take that hoodie off, it looks weird.” My suit is rumpled under it, creased from three days of road travel between the sweater and my skin. I try to smooth the worst of the wrinkles down, feeling self-conscious. 

Dana starts cooking something in a frying pan, Jodie hovering around, seeming carefree. I hang back, uneasy, my anxiety spiking when Dana glances back at me. “You don’t have to hang around here getting in the way, just don’t touch my stuff.”

I nod, trying to keep my posture nonthreatening, and I look around for exits. Two; the one we came in, and one on the wall to the right of that, leading to what looks like a living area. I wander towards it, keeping an ear open behind me for orders to stop.

None come, and I gingerly move from one room to the other. A couch across from a screen, a few shelves with photos and small figurines, a bookshelf. A glass tank on a side table, with about an inch of wood chips inside. I move closer, curious. There’s a few overturned containers with holes cut in the sides, and some monitoring equipment stuck to the glass. A shape is curled against the front wall of glass, difficult to see against the wood chips. I crouch down for a better look, head tilting.

It’s a snake.

That surprises me. I hadn’t thought humans kept reptiles as pets, usually they seem to prefer other mammals for companions. This one’s small, so much smaller than our mothers it’s almost a joke, mottled in shades of brown and yellow. It looks at me, eyes open and unblinking, and flickers out its tongue, apparently interested. I realize I’ve unconsciously done the same, stubby tongue stuck between my lips, and I pull it back in quickly, almost embarrassed. My temple twinges, a sharp momentary pain that makes me wince, lowering my head.

“What are you doing?”

I jump and straighten up quickly, somehow not having heard Dana enter. “I—”

“Don’t go talking parsletongue or whatever to my snake, you’re on thin ice enough as it is.”

“I, I was…” Maybe I stood up too quickly, my head’s swimming oddly. I shake it, trying to clear it, and Dana frowns further, expression changing.

She says something that I can’t make out. My vision blurs and something jolts into sight, an elongated, alien face, a face I’d only seen once before. Like the Sectoid Greys but larger, more intelligent. An Elder.

_Traitor._

The word makes me gasp, and the pain that follows blinds me, curling my spine inwards against my will. Dimly I hear shouting, over a high keening sound I slowly realize is me. My skull throbs, like an egg under pressure, and I barely register an impact on my side; the floor is suddenly pressed against my face, and I can’t feel my legs. Another throb and my skull feels like it’s about to burst. I know nothing but pain, and soon even that flees from me, leaving me in darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

I eventually become aware of something swinging in my field of vision, something vaguely brown and smelling of rodent. My jaw opens, snapping weakly at it, and the small part of me that’s conscious is surprised when I make contact. It’s past my teeth and down my throat before I realize it, and the motion of grabbing and swallowing seems to wake me up further. I blink, faces swimming into view; Jodie and Dana. 

It’s an effort to call on my understanding of human faces, but Jodie looks worried, concerned, while Dana’s face is a mix of interest and disgust. I groan internally.

“Wow, he really did go for it.”

“I told you, he ate a bug too, and I didn’t go dangling that one in his face.” Jodie peers closer, forehead creased. “You okay there?”

I try to speak, cough, and try again. “I… think, yes.”

“What happened?”

I wince; the memories themselves are almost painful to the touch. Then I inhale sharply, the realization of what it means causing my hearts to jump. “It, they— the Elders, they know.” My throat closes up, body shrinking back — into cushions, I realize dimly, they’d moved me onto the couch — and I try not to keen in fear. “They know I’m gone, they know what I’m hiding from them…”

Jodie and Dana exchange glances, their expressions changing. “Those psychic aliens, they’re at the top right?”

I nod, trying very hard not to whine. They’ll crush my mind like it’s nothing, pick apart my brain piece by piece until they find what they’re looking for, and then they’ll kill me. My hands creep up to my skull, cradling it, and I curl in on myself. I squeeze my eyes shut, a high keen escaping despite my best efforts, and I startle badly when Jodie lays a hand on my shoulder. Another spike of fear; I’d led her into this, the Elders will eat her alive. She should have just let me die three days ago.

“Hey, chill… we’ll find a way around this, I’m sure.” Impossible optimism, and it hurts all the more that it can never happen. No one can circumvent the Elders. I cover my face; they won’t stop looking at me. 

They keep talking in low voices, running ideas by each other, and even Dana seems willing to help now. Maybe seeing me in this state triggers some mammal instinct, it seems the most likely explanation for her change of opinion. Or maybe she’s just concerned for her friend, and figures that hiding me from the Elders will hide Jodie too.

Jodie’s saying, “I think they were working on some way to shield the soldiers from those Sectoid things, to keep them from getting mind controlled, maybe that’d work?”

Dana makes a face. “You want to go back to Xcom? Isn’t that what you were trying to avoid?”

I shudder, dreading that place almost as much as I dread being caught by the Elders, but Jodie’s replying, “I don’t think we have any other options.”

She runs a hand distractedly through her hair. “I mean I hate to say it, but we’re kinda outgunned on our own, and running from two powers is a lot harder than running from one while under the protection of the other.”

Assuming they won’t just shoot us on sight that is. She glances at me. “And, I mean… you do have info that could help us win this thing, Paris, and, well… if your people win, there’ll be nowhere left for you to hide, will there.”

I know. Oh, stars, do I know. Those words had run through my head uncountable times as we drove, though I am startled to hear them from Jodie. I hadn’t thought she would be blunt enough to say them out loud. I swallow thickly and nod, displaying the truth of them. “But, if they, if Xcom captures me again…”

She looks a little uncertain, but just a little. “I can try to get them to see that you’re there willingly, maybe they won’t throw you back in a cage. Maybe they will anyway, I can’t guarantee anything, but I’m sure I can at least keep you alive.” She takes one of my hands, curled up close to my chest with the other, and squeezes it. “I promise I won’t let them kill you.”

I swallow thickly, stomach tight. “I never… I never hated this place, I only ever did what I was told…”

Dana looks at me strangely, over Jodie’s shoulder. “These Elders, can they watch you without you knowing?”

I take a breath. “I… don’t know. If they could, they probably would not have let me get this far.”

“So that was, what, a warning?”

I shrug feebly. I can’t estimate how much they got from that single blow, but any amount of information is too much right now. “…we shouldn’t stay here too much longer.”

Jodie sighs, nodding. “Yeah… if we’re gonna go back to Xcom we’d better go soon. Ugh, three more days of driving.” She makes a face, understandably. 

“How did you get here anyway? I didn’t see your car out on the street.”

Jodie’s cheeks color slightly. “I, uh. Stole a car.”

Dana blinks, expression flat. She sighs. “Of course you did. Am I gonna find cops at my door after this?”

“Jeeze, I hope not. I parked it a few blocks away, and I really don’t think we were followed. I don’t think we’d have much luck driving back with the same car though, they’re probably on the lookout for it.”

“Well I can’t drive you, and you’re sure as hell not stealing another car.”

“So… train?”

“You can check, I dunno if there is one that goes where you need to go. I’m pretty sure there’s not a train station in the base, how are you gonna get close?”

She looks a bit sheepish at that. “I figure I’ll… call up Central?”

“You know, I can just picture that conversation.” Dana mimes holding a phone to her ear. “‘Yeah hey boss, just letting you know I’m coming back after a week on the lam and I’m bringing an alien friend too, don’t shoot us on sight!’”

Jodie shrugs. “I mean not in so many words, but yeah.”

Dana groans, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands, and Jodie laughs and nudges her shoulder with her own. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine somehow. Now come on, lunch is on right?”

She helps me up, my legs very weak, and a latent question bubbles to the surface. “…what did you give me earlier?”

She laughs, blushing a bit again. “One of Dana’s feeder mice, she gets them shipped in frozen for Juno. The snake,” she explains, seeing my expression. I’m not sure what to feel about that. Jodie shrugs. “We didn’t know how to wake you, she said it might be like smelling salts or something.”

I look back at the tank, uncertain of my feelings. I’m not sure if I’m feeling genuine kinship towards the earth reptile, or if I’m just ascribing significance to things that don’t matter.

I follow Jodie back into the kitchen, where I’m presented with a plate of grilled meat over pasta. It’s not bad, even following the raw mouse I’d been gifted. After finishing it I make the excuse of a bathroom stop to steal a few moments without anyone looking at me. 

The lights are too bright in Dana’s small bathroom, but it’s worth it to sit on the edge of the tub and breathe. My insides feel like jelly, and I’m sure that if I could cry, I would have been earlier. I just can’t process it, it’s too much. Another soft keen escapes my throat, and my hands tangle together uncontrollably. I make the mistake of looking up into the mirror, and I wish I hadn’t; I look tired, more greenish than usual and, without my glasses, painfully inhuman. It’s hard to believe anyone would let me on a train, never mind welcome me into Xcom headquarters. Then again, it’s hard to believe anyone would want to help me escape from Xcom headquarters either.

(I don’t understand what Jodie’s doing. I don’t understand why she would help me, why she wouldn’t see me as just a tangible representation of everything the Elders are trying to do to her home and her people. It confuses and distresses me.)

I wash my face and hands in the sink, taking deep breaths, and then it’s back out into the house. Dana loads us up with snacks and worried advice; Jodie would rather have us stay the night, at least, but given the risk of the Elders tracking us more closely, we can’t afford to. 

Jodie’s found us an express train that gets us within a few towns of the base, and it leaves in two hours. Enough time to sleep if I wanted to, but I’m afraid that if I relax too much the Elders will jump into my head again. Not that being vigilant would do much in the event that they tried.

So I just sit on the couch while Jodie and Dana plan, occasionally glancing back at the tank with the snake. Juno, Jodie said. I suppose I’m curious. I’d never seen a reptile this small before, but Dana seems protective of it, so I’m hesitant to investigate more. So I just sit in silence, elbows on my knees, trying not to think of anything depressing. The trouble is, there doesn’t seem to be anything to think about that’s _not_ depressing. 

I’m not paying attention, so I jump a bit when Dana walks in. She goes to the tank and opens the top of it, reaching in and dislodging one of the artificial burrows to pull Juno out. It doesn’t seem distressed, and coils half of itself around Dana’s arm. She turns back to me, holding Juno. “You seemed interested by her.”

“Yes, I haven’t…” It takes me a moment to find the words. “We used to look similar.”

“Suppose that explains the eyes.” I say nothing, wishing I still had my glasses. “Do you want to hold her?”

I look up, surprised. “…you would let me do that?”

She shrugs. “It’s not like she’s easy to hurt. Just support her body and don’t go poking at her eyes or anything.”

I nod, and she transfers the snake to my hands. Juno doesn’t seem to mind, long body around my palms and wrists. She seems as curious about me as I am about her. No doubt I smell very different than Dana.

I just watch her for a few moments, feeling dry scales and something approaching fondness. I can see why Dana would keep one as a companion. 

After a while I have to hand her back to Dana, who deposits her back in the tank. She lays her nose against the glass for a moment, then slides herself back under the artificial cave she was in before.

We leave forty minutes later, Dana driving us to the train station. Jodie makes her stop at a drugstore first, running in and coming back out a few minutes later. She hands me a folded set of sunglasses when she gets back in, grinning a bit. I smile back slightly, murmuring thanks. They’re a different shape than my last ones, but they do the job just fine, keeping the sun off my eyes and making me look a bit more human. Some of the tension goes out of my shoulders. Just some, though. 

The train is full enough to make me nervous, but we’re able to find some seats at the back with few people around. It’s a long ride. Jodie offers me a book, and it helps take my mind off my anxieties for a while. I really, really don’t want to be going back to that place. But I can see no other alternative, it’s likely the safest place I’ll be. Which, honestly, isn’t saying much. But it’s still an effort not to panic again.

Time passes, fewer passengers get on then get off, and eventually Jodie stands and leads me out onto the platform. It’s just past sunset, half the sky glowing purple and orange. Jodie tells me we’re still a substantial distance from the base, but it’s close enough that they should be able to pick us up fairly quickly. The station looks pretty close to the middle of nowhere, little more than dusty ground in any direction, broken by tracks and a single road. I stand nervously and wait.

Jodie pulls out her phone and goes through the recording tree until her clearance gets her where she needs to go.

“Heyyy Sean, can you tap me in to Central? I think I’ve got some explaining to do…”


	5. Chapter 5

They bind me with handcuffs and load me into the back of their airship, no less than three gun muzzles pointed my way. Jodie makes protesting noises, but I shake my head slightly at her. This is nothing, really, compared to what they could have done upon seeing me. The modified taser they used the first time was unpleasant enough once.

It’s a long ride, hard to tell how long without windows, which is surely by design. My stomach lurches when the ship descends, and I avoid looking at any of the soldiers in the hold with me. They open the belly of the ship and lead me out into the hangar of the base. I swallow a blockage of panic, forcing myself to stay calm. This is the only way. 

They undo the bonds and clip a tracker cuff to my ankle, which seems sensible. I am surprised to learn that they mean to let me lose in the facility, instead of containing me again. Jodie’s vouching must be having a heavy effect. 

I have to endure being poked and prodded again, searched for weapons and whatever else they suspect me of having, and the head human scientist seems particularly pleased to have me back.

“Miss Kalligan, I must thank you for bringing my specimen back, I was worried it would be lost to us! And for your safety, of course, I am glad you are unharmed.” She examines me, checking the almost-healed weals on my arm. “Too valuable to lose,” she mutters in German.

“Too valuable to kill, I hope,” I say back quietly, in the same language. She laughs. 

“For now, certainly, my reptilian friend.” Friend seems a bit strong in my mind, but I make no further comment. Jodie’s hussled off to talk with the man in charge, leaving me in unwelcoming company. No one here wants me back, save for the lead scientist. _I don’t want to be here either_ , I think, herded along to a small room in the lower levels of the base, apparently assigned to me now. 

The few scientists go their own way (“—a venom sample, we never did get one of those, and I want to have it look at the plasma rifles we have in construction…”) and the soldiers escorting me bicker about posting a guard (“—don’t care what Central or that techie says, we can’t let it wander around unsupervised.”) Always an _it_ , to them, but that’s fine. So long as I stay an alive it. I say nothing to the humans and retreat into what I suppose is now my living space; a small room with a bed and a desk, and a small dresser. Plain, uninteresting walls, no comforts. There’s a dark plastic bubble in one corner of the ceiling.

I sit down on the bed and sigh.

———————————————

There’s a knife over me.

I can’t focus on anything else, the lights are too bright to see around me, and all my attention is on the blade. Surgical, surely sharp down to the atoms, and descending towards my chest. My bare, unarmored chest.

I try to move, to get away, but I’m stuck in place, limbs caught. There’s murmurs around me, low, alien voices, and a few masked faces swim into view out of the light. I can’t understand them, and when I try to speak my tongue is frozen in my mouth. Nothing, nothing. The word repeats in my head, _traitor, traitor, traitor._

Terror constricts my airway, makes me feel like vomiting; I’m bound and exposed, about to be cut open alive, and there’s nothing I can do, no one— Jodie, where is she, _she promised—!_

My head impacts on something hard and I thrash, suddenly freed. I yelp and struggle for my bearings, and the room comes into focus. My room. The one I was assigned. I scramble for my chest, feeling my hearts pounding horribly but suit and skin intact. 

I’m unhurt.

I hold my head in my hands, curling in on myself. My shoes snag at the bed covers and I slowly realize that I’d fallen asleep fully dressed, with the lights still on. A hallucination, nothing more.

I’m not given time to dwell on it, there’s a sharp knock at the door. I pull myself together and answer it, hesitant. 

There are soldiers outside. “Vahlen wants you.”

I follow them, still badly shaken. It doesn’t bode well that the head scientist is summoning me, she makes me nervous enough as it is. Jodie’s there when we arrive at the labs, which calms me somewhat. I can’t decipher her expression very well as she takes me aside.

“Okay the good news is we think we have a way to defend against the Elders. The bad news is it needs to go directly into your skull.”

“…what?”

She pulls a face, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah… it’s gonna have to be surgery.”

My heartrate spikes and it takes a lot of effort not to react; if I move, I’ll run. Jodie’s still talking. “I tried to steer them to an external unit but Doctor Vahlen overrode me, she doesn’t want it to be removable. But don’t worry, it’ll be safe! We know enough about your biology by now to put you under no problem, it’ll be like… dentistry, I guess? Did you ever have that done?”

I can’t respond, too busy trying not to break down in a panic. Under the knife, right into my head, no, no I can’t do that. I jump: Jodie’s put her hand on my arm. “Hey, don’t worry. I won’t let them do anything funny, just put the thing in and that’s it. You probably won’t even feel it.”

I swallow, hands twisted together, then nod. Nightmare aside, if I turn down the only chance to shut the Elders out of my head, I’m dead no matter what. And some small surgery would pale in comparison to what they would do to me. I’m going to have to endure this.

I have to exchange my suit for a thin paper garment, feeling gangly and awkward. The lead scientist is entirely too excited about this, cheerful and bustling around and ordering me onto an operating table, to lay sideways. I stay as silent as possible, trying to keep the fear from overflowing. I just keep reminding myself that it’s the only way, that they won’t do anything to hurt me permanently. Too valuable, Vahlen said.

The scientists fit a rubber half-bubble over my mouth, held on with elastic, and tell me to count back from ten. I swallow and do so, murmuring numbers until they get fuzzy in my mouth. My fear still urges me to stay awake, but the gas is stronger and soon I stop noticing anything.

————————

It’s impossible to tell how much time has passed. I feel soft and hazy, reluctant to move or speak or do anything. I hear hazy, muffled voices around, vague shapes moving at the edges of my vision. I can’t bring myself to care, or to be afraid.

One of the shapes leans in and smiles at me. “Heyyy buddy, how’re you feeling?”

I mumble, tongue heavy and sluggish. Another human leans in and shines a light in my eyes, flicking it back and forth. I flinch, following it on automatic, and the human withdraws with a few positive-sounding words. There’s two or three of them hovering around, doing things I can’t focus on. I try to pay attention to Jodie.

She holds something to my lips and they open for it. Surprising sweetness; it’s fruit. I hadn’t realized how hungry I am.

She feeds me small pieces and updates me on what they’ve put in my head. It went fine, she says, and there’s a small nodule implanted at the base of my skull. It’s meant to project a psychic shield, a barrier to mental invasion. Carefully, I reach around to feel it. There’s a bandage in the way, and the IVs pull at my arm, making it twinge.

Jodie looks a bit sheepish. “I couldn’t stop her taking blood samples, sorry about that.”

I mumble something inconsequential; blood I can spare, and better that she did it when I couldn’t see. The food helps me wake up, and I sit up in the bed they left me in. Still in the labs, I think, I see a few other beds with bandaged humans resting in them. 

Vahlen stops by after a while to check on the readings of the machines attached to me and to make cryptic comments. I still don’t like her very much.

They’re eager to get me out of the medical bay. Real people need the bed and resources, and my presence isn’t all that healthful for the wounded. Truth be told, I’d rather be back in my assigned room sooner than later. The Elders are gone from my mind, hopefully for good, but uneasiness lingers.

They change the dressing on the incision spot and allow me to bathe, which is welcome. The base has communal showers with individual stalls, and either no one else needs them right now, or no one else is willing to use them while I’m in the room. Either way, I’m glad for the solitude. 

No doubt they’re still observing me somehow. I assume the leg tracker is waterproof and turn one of the showerheads on hot. The warmth is a relief, and it’s soothing to scrub away the dust and dirt from three days of travel. The soap will dry my skin out, but it’s preferable to staying grimy. After that I just stay under the spray for a while, letting my arms hang. I should take small pleasures where I can get them, and warm water is a favorite.

The back of my neck twinges; now that nothing’s distracting me, I remember something odd. I’d thought I was completely unaware while they put the implant in, but there’s a memory of pressure without context. Pushing and prodding, almost a physical sensation but not quite. Pinching, more pressure on my actual skin, like a small animal biting the back of my neck. Thinking about it now, I shiver. And then the pinching increased, almost to the point of real awareness, and the mental pressure cut out suddenly. And that’s where the half-memory ends.

I don’t know what to make of it. A hallucination brought on by anesthetic, or some species of dream, or some vestige of consciousness persisting despite the drugs. It certainly seems to be a representation of the operation, and an indicator that the implant works. I sigh and lean my head against the cooler tile. It’s too complicated for me.

Eventually I get out and towel off, wrapping myself in the cloth to scurry back to my assigned room. The paper gown I wore in probably wouldn’t survive contact with damp skin. 

I make it back un-accosted, gratefully finding some simple clothes in the wardrobe. I don’t know if I’ll be getting my suit back, but I can live without it. The clothes I’ve been left are inelegant and not tailored for my shape, mostly grey and green. I put them on anyway, ignoring the bagginess and the bands of exposed skin at ankles and wrists, and decide to sleep. It comes easily even after having been unconscious for a few hours, and it’s mercifully empty of dreams or mental invasion.


	6. Chapter 6

I wake to an announcement calling the crew to dinner, ending with a sigh, “and the alien too.”

I’m not sure what they hope to gain by having me eat with the rest of the base personnel. Truth be told I’d rather avoid large concentrations of them, they make me nervous enough as it is. But I’m surprisingly hungry again, and I don’t think I’ll have much luck convincing them to bring me food individually.

So I try to make myself presentable — not much luck there, I haven’t even got shoes — and walk down to the dining hall. It’s hard to avoid people, so I try to stick to the walls and seem as unobtrusive as possible. Easy in cities where anonymity is king, and no one knows to watch out for you anyway, but almost impossible here in the human stronghold. Everyone knows what I am, and no one wants me here. Well, maybe one person, but. One person against a hundred.

(And their numbers are surprisingly small. Two dozen soldiers, maybe, a dozen more of scientists and engineers each, a handful of administrative staff. Nothing near what we’d thought they had, what with their successes in the field.)

The dining hall is almost full, and the low noise and presence of the crowd makes my skin prickle. I swallow and forge on, despite half-disguised glares and snide mutters. Maybe it’s a test, that they want me to eat communally, to see if I can behave myself in a group. Well, I’m certainly not going to give them any reason to lock me up again.

I keep my head down and join the food line, concrete floor cold against my feet. I avoid meeting anyone’s eyes and get served a measure of vegetables and some kind of stew, trying not to hear the cook’s muttering. If I had anything resembling a human circulatory system I would be bright red.

The inertia of the line ends and I’m left stranded at the end of it, suddenly panicking; I don’t know where to sit. Every table is occupied with people who would sooner see me dead than share a meal with them, and the longer I stand here the more eyes are on me. I’m stuck, unable to move, unable to stay where I am.

Then, salvation; a table clearing out at the side of the hall, a gaggle of engineers leaving it mercifully empty. I move quickly to snag it before anyone else sits there and blocks it off from me. Success, a small table is mine, for however long it will take me to eat whatever it is I’ve been given.

I can examine my food more closely now that I’m not having a panic attack over where to sit. Plantstuff, presumably steamed, presumably nutritious. Chunks of meat in thick brown broth, with more vegetables in with them. I taste both; nothing spectacular, but perfectly edible. 

So I eat them. I’d forgotten water but that’s alright, I can manage without it for one meal. I am silent and as unobtrusive as possible, doing nothing to attract more attention than I already have. And, mercifully, after a quarter of an hour that attention seems to be thinning out. People are looking away, returning to conversations on topics other than me. The novelty must be wearing off, I suppose, now that I’ve given no indication of plotting to poison the whole room. Which I could do, theoretically, but I would not live very long after doing so. Surely they don’t think I’m that suicidal.

Eventually the crowd thins out, giving me further room to breathe. I don’t see Jodie, she must be busy elsewhere. I wish I knew where to find her, but I’m not about to go wandering around and getting in people’s way. I finish my food and remain sitting, waiting for the room to empty further. I relax gradually, able to tune out the remaining people, chin resting on my hand. If they don’t need me immediately, I might nap some more, or try to find Jodie. 

I’m too lost in thought to notice the soldiers approaching, and I only startle back when a hand comes down to smack the table in front of me.

“Hey there snake.”

Oh, damn. Four of them in light armor, clustered around the table. My ability to decipher human expressions isn’t always the best, but these are easy; anger, contempt, meanness. This isn’t good.

“Got a lot of nerve, coming out here like this. Couldn’t find any rats to eat?”

I mutter something about going and make to stand, but one of them moves behind me and I don’t have enough room to move. “Not so fast. Let’s have a chat. Somewhere more… private, yeah?”

I try to find an opening to escape, but one of them grabs my arm and yanks me along across the room, behind the cleared-out buffet line, and into a side corridor off what must be the kitchens. I yelp, looking back to the few people left in the dining hall, but none of them turn my way. I let my bones go loose, to get free, but I’ve only slithered out of one grip when two more grasp my upper arms. I can smell violence, almost like mutons wrestling each other before an invasion, and my hearts speed up.

I’m tossed out, catching myself against a wall, and when I turn I’m met with an ugly sneer. “I dunno what Central was thinking, letting you back in here. Shoulda shot you on sight and fixed whatever’s wrong in that scientist’s head. What’d you do, some kinda hypnosis? Snake magic?”

I had done no such thing, but of course they’d think I’d coerced her. Of course they wouldn’t believe any human would want to help me. “I didn’t—”

A thick finger jabs me in the chest. “Don’t think we’re all that stupid. We know a spy when we see one, we know what you’re up to.” The man’s face is hot, angry. “We’ve seen what you aliens do to people.”

I should have anticipated this. Of course the soldiers here had fought with us, no doubt many had died in the field. They have every reason to hate me. But…

The soldier snorts, jabbing me again. “You’re worth more dead than alive.”

Sudden anger, I’m not ready for it. I hiss and narrow my eyes, surprising him. “You don’t know what you would give up if you killed me.”

The larger, more inteligent part of me says _wait, no, this is stupid_ , but that part isn’t the part that grabs the soldier’s jabbing hand, making the anger on his face double. “I can win this war for you, before the Elders decide you’re not worth playing with anymore. You have no idea what they would do, and if you are very lucky you will never find out.”

I don’t actually know if I can make good on that, but the soldier’s lip is curling and his cohort is closing in and there really isn’t time to regret it. 

I dodge the first few blows, miraculously. I’m faster than them by a long shot, and if this were an open plane I would have the upper hand. But in close quarters like this, and outnumbered, strength means more than speed does, and once one of them catches me in the chest and knocks the wind out of me, that’s that.

We are really very fragile, not suited to melee fighting, with little muscle or fat to cushion blows. I screech, trying to get some leverage to escape them, but it’s not working, I can’t think straight. Desperate, my chest convulses; I try to stop it but at this point it’s half reflex, and the only thing I can think of to get them off me.

I cough hard and greenish gas blooms around us, making the soldiers recoil and choke, and finally I can breathe.

Not for long though; I’m grabbed again, painfully, and yanked. “Here, get it in here!” My head’s still spinning and I ache too badly to move, and sudden cold makes me gasp. I fall hard on icy metal and a last harsh coughing laugh makes my head ring before cutting off in a sharp slam.

Silence. I lie still.

The taste of my poison dissipates and I catalogue my pains. Sharp in my ribs, dull on my limbs and shoulders, the inside of my cheek cut on my teeth. Nothing broken, my bones are strong enough for that, but battered and bruised and so very miserable. And cold, very very cold.

I open my eyes and look around. A small, wide room full of misty air, with boxes and crates lining the walls, and slabs of meat hanging from the ceiling.

They put me in a freezer.

I try to stand, but the floor burns my bare feet and I have to sit down again, body complaining loudly at movement. At the very least the cold soothes minor aches, but in doing so it will kill me. Our mothers have no tolerance for cold, the polar regions of our home are uninhabited. I remember, vaguely, a story I was told once; a serpent with blood and breath of ice, a cruel king. I shove it from my mind, it won’t help me here.

My breath makes a feeble cloud and I huddle in on myself, trying to preserve meager heat. I can see from here the door has no handle on this side, and even if I tried no one would hear me. Or they would hear me and ignore me. I’ll probably be killed anyway if I am let out, for poisoning those soldiers. I hide my face between my knees and chest, aching. 

The cold saps me, leaves me stiff and hazy, unaware of anything but misery. Not even misery, I don’t have the energy to be miserable. I’m just… sad. The cold hurts, but then it numbs, and I don’t feel when I fall over, curled onto my side. I can’t cry like humans can, but if I could the tears would freeze to my face. My eyes close and I try to think nothing. 

My brain won’t let me rest. It keeps going, makes me hear things. Muffled voices, shouting, clattering. Senseless things. Then light and a wind, and the voices condense into “—drub them myself, the assholes!”

Suddenly I’m hauled up again, joints popping painfully, and I try to yowl and succeed only in groaning weakly. Noise and light that makes me flinch, and a feeling so strange it takes me a moment to place it. Warm air. “Hurry up, get a blanket! One of the heated ones, a hot pack! Fuck it, a whole hypo kit!”

I’m turned over and lifted upright, legs dragging, and something pats my face. “Hey, come on, you’ve gotta keep moving.”

I try, I know that voice and I _try_ , my legs twitch and shudder and slide under me, but when they try to take my weight they buckle. Jodie keeps hold of me, keeping me upright, and warm cloth is draped around my shoulders, feeling so strange on my numbed skin. I swallow thickly and keep trying, Jodie helping me start to walk.

The blanket helps, and soon I feel blood flowing properly again. After that I can stand, woozily, and I know I’m going to live. 

My tongue takes longer to thaw then my legs do, so I just cling to her nearly soundlessly, feeling warmth and crippling relief and I keen, softly, unstoppably. She holds onto me, warm arms and body and soft words, soft and soothing.

I’m hustled out, stumbling on half-numb feet, and herded through hallways and into a room a floor down, with couches facing a low table and a number of people already there. The spot I’m dropped into has a basin of water in front of it, and it’s blessedly warm on my feet. A mug full of something hot is put in my hands and one of the people standing clears his throat. I look up, feeling finally coming back into my body, and blink. 

“We’ve had reports of a UFO landing in the north-east sector.”

Sudden nervousness, and it must show on my face because the man sighs. “I’m not accusing you, I’m telling you.”

Jodie’s still there, on the couch next to me. “Waaaaaait no, you’re not gonna send him out there are you?”

“I am going to do exactly that.”

She bristles. “What! He was just frozen half to death!”

The man waves a hand. “Incident aside—” Jodie tries to cut him off but he shoots her a look, and she huffs and crosses her arms. “Incident aside, this is an _intact_ UFO. We’ve only been able to take them back in pieces, but your Paris could bring the whole ship back to us.” He looks at me, expectantly. “Can you do that?”

“I…” I gulp, nervous, but I have to do _something_ to earn my keep here. “Yes.”

“Are you sure.”

I nod, inhaling. “I can do it.” I can hide it from the trackers, maybe fake its destruction. I’ll need to get into the guts of the thing, but that shouldn’t be hard if there are soldiers on hand to clear the area. 

He nods. “Good.” Jodie’s still visibly unhappy with the plan, and he moves to mollify her. “It’s the commander’s orders, Kalligan, and we need this edge.”

She huffs. “I know. Just don’t send those idiots on this one, I don’t want them near him.”

“No need to worry, they’ll be laid up for a day or so waiting out the poison.”

I wince. “I, I didn’t…”

The man shakes his head. “As far as I’m concerned it was justified, you’re off the hook.”

I exhale slowly, tension going out of my shoulders. That’s…. good. It’s good. I look down again, at the mug I still have in my hands. The liquid inside is translucent green and gently steaming. I take a tentative sip, then another larger one. I like it, earthy and warming.

The man’s still talking. “Before you go, though, Vahlen and Shen want a word. They’ve been cooking up something big, I think.”

I nod absently, not exactly up for talking, but I don’t think I’ve been given a choice. Doubtful I’ll be able to sleep before the mission, either, so I’ll just have to live with that. Jodie grumbles beside me, somehow still outraged on my behalf, and I feel a surge of gratitude. Bringing a ship back will have to do for thanks, I’m not sure what else I can do. 

The man comes back with the head scientist, and another man I may have seen once. They take seats across from us.

Vahlen speaks first. “I took the liberty of monitoring your brain activity during the shield implantation, I got some very interesting readings out of it.”

I say nothing, waiting for her to continue.

“There did indeed seem to be some kind of… external interference. Low level waves from an unknown source. Fortunately they ceased as soon as the device was operational. But it made me wonder, this… psionic network your Elders seem to use, could it be weaponized?”

I blink, realizing the scope of what she’s asking. “I don’t… You can’t fight them inside it, it’s suicide.” I shake my head. “They’re stronger than anything.”

The scientist hums and leans back, looking thoughtful. “How vital is it?”

“…what?”

“How important, is it a major part of your infrastructure?”

“I… suppose so. Orders, control, they rule through it.”

She gets a look I’m not entirely sure I like, and turns to the balding man. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

He looks pensive, brow furrowed. “Perhaps. Would it work?”

“We would make it work. Could you build the transmitter?”

“Of course, that part should be simplest.”  They go on like this, back and forth, without giving any indication of their growing plan. I frown, distressed; this is dangerous territory. Jodie leans her shoulder against my arm, and I look over at her.

“How’s the tea?”

I smile a bit, mug warm in my hands. “It’s very good.”

She grins back.

I’m given a once-over by one of the medical staff, revealing plenty of bruises but no lasting injuries (“No frostbite even, how’d you manage that?”), and am deemed fit to travel and even given my suit back. Jodie squeezes my hand before rushing off to the labs, to help with whatever it is Vahlen is planning, and I’m hustled into the airship with a half dozen soldiers. Fewer glares this time, despite the conflict with others of their kin, but my stomach still lurches as we lift off. I swallow my nervousness and steel myself. I’m going to bring back a ship.


	7. Chapter 7

[DN]: So update me already, did you get back ok?  
[JK]: yeah, all’s good here  
[JK]: well, kinda  
[JK]: we got back fine but some jerkwads shoved Paris in a freezer  
[JK]: and now Central’s sent him out to pick up a spaceship with a flat tire  
[JK]: he barely had a chance to thaw!  
[DN]: Seriously?  
[DN]: Shit, that’s rough  
[DN]: Any new breakthroughs on the science front?  
[JK]: dude this is an unsecured channel  
[JK]: if the NSA can read our texts I’m sure the aliens can  
[DN]: Hi to the NSA agent reading this by the way  
[JK]: hiiiii :D  
[DN]: But keep me posted when you can, ok?  
[DN]: Sometimes it’s like you fall off the face of the earth in there  
[JK]: I will I will, promise  
[JK]: miss you too nerd  
[DN]: No you’re the nerd

I’m jittering with nerves for almost a half an hour, but they dissipate fast once I realize it’s going to take a while to get there. Then a new set of nerves sets in; unknown hours in close quarters with human soldiers. They don’t look or smell aggressive, but that doesn’t help much. They can’t like this any more than I do.

“So. You really think you can do this?”

I startle, looking up then quickly back down. One of the soldiers across from me is watching me, not openly hostile, just… attentive. Expectant. I swallow.

“I believe so, yes.”

He nods, and sticks out his hand across the gap. “Charlie Marrson.”

This, at least, is a social ritual I recognize. I reciprocate, shaking his hand, and the man smiles. “They called you Paris? Hope it’s not rude, but I didn’t think you people had names like that.”

I gesture vaguely, a bit sheepish. “It’s not… Jodie named me, my first designation is difficult on human tongues.”

“Well, lets hear it.”

I’m hesitant, but I repeat my first name. Charlie tilts his head, puzzled, and attempts to replicate it. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed before, but I come close now; what he says is nothing close to my name, and is phonetically similar to something almost comically rude. I wave a hand at his questioning expression. “You see why a human name is convenient.”

“Heh, guess I do.” He jerks a thumb at the muscular woman next to him, then at the dark man on his other side. “Jessie Craw, and Andy Sajheed.” 

I greet each quietly, the two of them nodding at me. The others gradually introduce themselves, and I relax slowly. There’s a sense of camaraderie among these people, a sense that I am still well outside of, but they seem tolerant enough of me that I don’t feel threatened.

Silence well broken, they start talking, swapping stories amongst themselves. Speculation about what we’ll find. I lean my head back and wait.

What I’ll need to do is this: all of our ships are wired into a network, and if I want to get this one back to base without bringing the whole fleet after us I’ll need to disconnect it. Preferably, I can make the ship computer think it’s been destroyed, then I can pilot it back to where they need it. Unless it’s one of the older scouts without damage reporting, in which case I’ll just have to cut it off and hope they don’t go looking for it. Then I can just input coordinates and let it drive itself back. Which raises another issue, how to fly it so that the exhaust and electrical signals don’t show up on our monitoring…

I chew on these problems all through the flight, working out a plan of action for how to do the job I’ve been assigned. Hopefully the rest of the team will handle relieving the ship of its crew, I’m in no shape for another fight. And I haven’t been armed, so they must be assuming I won’t be fighting.

Upon approach of the landing site, administration radios in for a final briefing, and then the back hatch of the airship is opening, letting in surprisingly damp wind. The soldiers closest to the door unhook themselves from the seats and leap for it, grabbing hold of swinging ropes and rappelling down. The rest follow, and I grit my teeth and jump after them. I don’t even go for the ropes, they’d scrape my hands to the bone, so I just loosen my bones and fall into a roll upon impact, dispersing the force and letting me stand with only a wave of renewed aches along the bruises to show I just fell twenty feet. 

Charlie laughs and claps me on the back, making me stumble a bit. “Warn us next time you’re gonna pull a stunt like that, I wanna film it!”

One of the others snorts and quips back, “Don’t you go vining this, Chuck, you’ll start another cryptid meme.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing!”

The laughter dies down as they move into position. I keep to the rear of the group, crouched low and moving from cover to cover like they do. I can see the ship ahead, sitting squat in the damp earth, and over the smell of dirt and rot I can detect mutons, sectoids, the metallic scent of robot units. None of my own hybrid kind, and I’m almost grateful for that. No need for infiltrators in a forest. I relay the information in a quiet whisper, and the soldiers position themselves accordingly. I can’t tell them who is where, but they seem appreciative of having advance notice of what’s waiting for them. 

Then the shooting starts and I plaster myself behind a tree and hope it doesn’t come near me. I don’t like it, I don’t think I ever liked it, but it never mattered what I liked or didn’t like before, so I never gave it much thought. But now I’m free to hide and wait till it ends and I intend to take full advantage of the situation. 

But luck isn’t with me today; my eyes snap open at a squelching sound, a footstep in mud, and I catch sight of a hulking shape in the underbrush. A muton circling around from behind, to flank them. It sees me, I see it, and it knows I’m not supposed to be here because it grunts in surprise. “Runaway!”

Easy enough to take that as a suggestion; I bolt, sprinting back around towards the soldiers and yelping a warning. They turn and fire, but the muton’s already bellowed my presence and the rest of them know I’m here now. Heads and guns turn, a sectoid chitters something too fast for me to catch, and I dive below a rock outcropping. I know my job, I know what I’m here for, and I know that the best thing I can do right now is stay out of the way. Let the people with guns do their shooting and just, just wait it out. That’s all.

And there’s an awful lot of shooting. I can’t see very much of it, but I can smell plasma and blood and there’s so much yelling, it makes my head throb.

Then my head throbs again, with _intent_ , and my hearts leap into my throat. No, no no not again, not now! I squeeze my eyes shut and will the device in my skull to work, will it to keep them out and away from my thoughts. The pressure shifts, testing and probing, and the rock shielding me from the fight crumbles, battered apart by plasma fire. I spring up, trying to dart to the next bit of cover I can find, but I must have picked a really awful time to make a break for it because something stinging slams into my side and causes my legs to fly out from under me.

Plasma pistol shot, I know it when I feel it, and I try my damndest not to feel it while trying to get moving again. I can feel my suit smoldering, hissing through my teeth and slipping in the wet earth. There’s yelling, human and alien, and something grabs me by the back of my suit jacket and hauls me up, roughly, making me yelp. 

Hot breath steams through a respirator and the muton growls at me, beady little eyes examining. I gulp and try to think up some lie, something to get it to release me, but it’s already moving quickly back towards the ship, bellowing in their language, “Get the skiff!”

_No._

I hiss and struggle, loosening my bones and slipping out of the jacket. The muton swings its head around as I hit the ground and grabs for me, but I’m faster than it is by a mile and it misses. I’m running now, away from the ship and back towards people I suddenly trust with my life, and my hearts lurch and—

Like lightning from above, my head cracks in two. My vision whites out and I fall, motor controls offline, and I can’t even scream it _hurts._ They’re clawing at the shield, compressing it, and I clutch my head and try to wail. Dimly I’m aware of being moved, carried, but I can’t even think. 

Impact, noise from a great distance, a sense of cracking, fracturing around me. _Back with us, now. Ours again._ They’re ripping the shield away, crushing it like it’s nothing, like _I’m_ nothing. 

_Why,_ I howl into the blackness beyond my brain, _why can’t you just kill me and end this? Why am I so important?_

A series of images too fast to see, impressions on the inside of my head, moments from the past few days. Snapshots of the desert, of driving, tiny preserved iotas of my internal state. My feeble attempts at human companionship and trust. And then the answer, simple and cruel.

_You amuse us._

Then their assault redoubles, crashing in on my fledgeling sense of self and shattering it like so much glass, and I cease to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It looks like an ending but it's not. The next chapter is being difficult at me so it might be a bit before it's up, but there's definitely more coming!


	8. Chapter 8

Jodie is furious. 

“This is exactly why I didn’t want you to send him out there!”

Central blinks. “I thought it was because you were afraid the soldiers would kill him.”

“That too! Don’t derail me!” She fumes, pacing in tight circles. “You sent him out and now he’s gone, they got him again, this is exactly what I brought him back here to prevent!”

One of the other soldiers in attendance, Lester, glowers. “As if it’s that big of a loss, I knew this would happen.”

Jodie rounds on him glaring fit to combust. “And you! You don’t get to talk, after the shit you pulled! Medical should have put you in a coma!”

He only sneers. “What, gotten a bit attached to your pet alien?” He turns back to Central. “I was right and you know it, he went running back to his masters first chance he got, and now they’ll come pouring down on us any moment now. We’ve gotta prepare, or better yet, hit them before they hit us.”

Jodie sputters outrage, turning to another soldier. “Chuck, you were there, tell this asshole that isn’t what happened.”

Charlie leans forward in his seat, elbows on his knees. “I mean listen, I can’t speak for anything that happened after we extracted, but from what I saw he didn’t want to go with them. He fought properly, is what I saw. Either your alien is a very good actor, or they took him back by force.”

Lester snorts, muttering under his breath, “Of course it’s a good actor, it’s a goddamn spook,” but Central forestalls the next round of arguing. 

“Regardless of intent, our location and intel are now in severe jeopardy, and we need to move fast.” He draws up a map on screen. “Fortunately our guest’s tracker is still active, so we at least have that to go on.” The map condenses, showing a ship-shaped mass over the ocean. “The Commander is putting together a team now to board that ship and disable it before they bring the fight to our doorstep.”

“I’m going.”

Central looks exasperated. “Kalligan, you’re not a member of the combat personnel, we can’t let you go into the field like that.”

Her face is militant. “I don’t care.”

Further discussion is interrupted by Vahlen’s arrival. She clears her throat, and Central gives her the floor. “I have good news, and bad news. The good news is that Dr. Shen and I believe we have created a means by which to cripple the aliens’ psionic network.”

The soldiers perk up, interested, but Central frowns. “And the bad news?”

“The bad news is that we can’t do it from here. We need to have a broadcaster on this mission to get close enough to the Elders to cut them off. And the only one we have on hand is currently undergoing extensive repairs, besides which it weighs about twice as much as any of your usual equipment loads.”

There’s groans across the room, and one soldier pipes up, “Can’t you build a new one? Smaller?”

“No we cannot, Mr. Jacobson, because you wanted a plasma launcher and we are out of resources. And it would take at least a week to construct a second model. But there is an alternative, however unlikely it may be to succeed.”

Central’s getting a look like he doesn’t like where this is going. “And what is that, Doctor?”

She gestures to Jodie. “The psionic shield I implanted in Ms. Kalligan’s alien friend, it is possible that it could serve as a broadcaster if reactivated. I have even taken the liberty of sending the relevant files to download.” She explains, in response to Central’s questioning look, “It is inactive now, yes, but still intact and capable of receiving information while passive. The only catch is that I cannot activate it from here, it will have to be done manually.”

“Hah!” Jodie points triumphantly at Central. “Now you _have_ to let me go!”

Central groans, rubbing his forehead. Vahlen gives him a look. “…okay, fine. You can go on this absurd mission. But understand your only job here is to reactivate that device. This is not a rescue mission. If your Paris is hostile, if he’s turned on us, you cannot waste time on him. Kill him if necessary, just get that device operational.”

Jodie swallows and nods, insides suddenly tangled with nerves. _Kill him if necessary._ Well, she’ll just have to avoid making it necessary. Piece of cake.

The meeting goes on for a bit longer, ironing out wrinkles in the plan and briefing everyone who needs briefing. Jodie catches up to Vahlen on her way out. “Doctor, I’m… thank you, for that.”

The corner of Vahlen’s mouth twitches up. “My dear I have no idea what you mean. But do try to bring my equipment back in one piece, thank you.”

Jodie nods, suppressing a grin, and rushes off to get suited up.

———————————

He must be so scared.

He must be terrified, hell, he could be dead, except the tracker’s still active and it would tell them if circulation stopped, so he must still be alive.

Jodie chews her nails, a bad habit she thought she kicked ages ago, all through the skyranger flight. She’s nervous, amped up and antsy, half with fear for herself, half stewing in sympathy for Paris. She promised this wouldn’t happen, it’s her responsibility…

She’s trying very hard not to get overwhelmed with guilt and other stupid emotions, trying to tell herself that she can’t afford to start a pity party now, she can do it once she’s fixed this monumental fuckup, but it’s… really hard. She forces herself to inhale, fidgeting uncontrollably. 

It’s bad, she knows. Going off into unknown, alien territory, with the slim hope of finding a single person before anyone else does. And the rest of the team will certainly prioritize getting that device operational over his life, she knows that for sure.

….is it bad that she wouldn’t? That she’s more concerned with keeping an alien alive then with dealing a blow that could win them the war?

Her mouth twists into an unhappy line. Paris is her _friend_ dammit, she made a _promise_. She can have her cake and eat it too. And she knows, she _knows_ he didn’t go back willingly. Whatever they have to fight through to get to him, they’ll do it. They’ve got the guns to do it. 

It’s almost an hour later when the skyranger banks, hovers, disgorges six soldiers and one very determined engineer onto the flattest part of the gargantuan alien ship over the Atlantic, and departs again. 

————————

This may be the least amount of fun Jodie’s ever had. It’s certainly less fun than all the other supposed low points in her life — all the times grad school seemed like a monumental waste of money, all the badly ended relationships, that one time she caught meningitis and almost died, this mission takes the cake from all of them.

She narrowly avoids getting chryssalid guts splattered all over her, stifling a small scream. She’s got a small laser pistol, but the thing had rushed her too fast to use it. It took two shots in quick succession from Allison Trent, one of the rangers, to put the thing down, and then they’re moving on, the room cleared. Someone takes a shot at the tesla coil-looking things in the center of the room, which explode obligingly, and the lights in the room flicker and dim. Taking out the power sources, they said. It’s what they did with the other ship, the one they went up against two months ago. It’s insurance here, in case the whatever-it-is that Vahlen gave her to do doesn’t work.

(Course it’s not a whatever-it-is to Jodie, she was briefed on the specifics of the plan in more detail than they were, and she’s a scientist dammit, she knows this stuff. It’s like a psychic EMP, meant to shut down any psionic receptors and broadcasters in the area. Hell, there might be a new field after all this is done with, psio-biology or something. Wouldn’t that be neat.)

They keep moving through the ship, wary of each new bit of alien architecture. They work their way through more chryssalids, more mutons, more of the aliens’ mechanical soldiers. Jodie even succeeds in shooting down a small floating drone. 

But the sectopod fucks them up. Despite its size, it catches them by surprise, opening with a hail of rockets that ruins any chance of cover. The team scatters, diving for anything they can use to shield themselves, and Jodie’s thrown back by the blast into a pile of crates. She lies there dazed for a moment, freshly battered and not at all used to it, and dimly she hears more yelling and shooting from the other side of the room. The ground shakes as the sectopod moves, and shakes some more when it’s hit by explosives. 

Jodie tries to stand, and the crates shift under her and collapse, and by the time she can extricate herself the sectopod is chasing the rest of the team down a side hallway, lasers snapping like teeth in the tight confines. She swears, hefting her pack with aching muscles and makes to go after them, but something makes her stop. 

Down another hallway to her left, faint hissing. Could be machinery, but to her ear it sounds organic. Though enough of the alien technology seems way too organic to be just metal and glass… She swallows, looking back down the corridor her team got separated down. She can see flashes and small explosions, the fight still going on. She’s wary of moving through this place on her own, but this may be her only chance. If she’s right…

She swears internally and scratches a quick arrow into the metal floor with the small knife they gave her, to show which direction she went, and starts moving down the hallway. She fiddles with the activator device Vahlen gave her, a little taser-looking thing that would communicate with the shielding gadget in Paris’s head and get it to do what she needed it to do. She passes it from hand to hand, nerves curdling her stomach, and she moves as quickly as she dares. 

There’s another burst of hissing from ahead and she ducks down behind a stuck-out bit of piping. She can hear movement; definitely aliens. The hissing makes her think Thin Men. Maybe her particular Thin Man. She peeks out, tentatively. Sees one of them pacing past the entrance into another room, what looks like a few more moving away down a far hall.

None of them look like prisoners, and she’s suddenly apprehensive at the thought of a fight. All she has is a pistol and a utility knife, and she’s not at all confident in her ability to use them. She dithers, indecisive and chewing her tongue, behind the exposed pipe, and is suddenly aware of footsteps coming closer.

_Shit._ Shit fuck shit and now she’s stuck, can’t move or she’ll be seen, can’t stay where she is or she’ll be seen. She fumbles for her pistol, breath tight in her throat. She has to make a decision, _now._

She decides to run.

She bolts up, startling a shriek out of the alien nearly on top of her hiding place, and she sprints back down the hall the way she came. This, it turns out, was a bad idea. The Thin Man is much faster than she is, and it rushes after her in leaping strides, gaining fast. There’s no time to think; she stops short and drops down, sliding on the metal floor, and the alien can’t correct fast enough and it trips over her, stumbling badly. Something scrapes her shoulder as it goes, making her wince and look, and—

That’s a tracker anklet. That’s _Paris’s_ tracker anklet. 

She scrambles back up, staring, and shit she sees it now, it is him. There’s a yellowish splotch on one side of his face that must be bruising, from those assholes at the base or when he was captured again, and she’s momentarily mystified at why she didn’t recognize him before.

No matter. She calls out to him, straightening up, “Paris!” He doesn’t move, head tilted as if puzzled. Jodie frowns. “Paris?”

He raises his plasma rifle, barrel pointing dead ahead. 

At her.

_Oh, shit._


	9. Chapter 9

I had been stupid. Foolish. I see that now. There had never been anything else but this, the mission, my purpose. No desertion. No escape.

Shame tastes sour in my mouth, dull under the prevailing numbness. It’s hard to even remember what I did to be ashamed of, my mind aches sharply whenever I try to think about it. Better to just let it be.

I am armed and ignored, dropped right back into the space I ought to occupy. My siblings speak low and soft, if at all, and it is like I never left. 

Did I ever leave? I can’t tell, it’s so hard to think. My mind seems to twitch, to flinch away, but it’s held fast to this blank sort of nothingness, barren ground unable to hold thought. It hitches and falls still, and I forget about it. 

I keep moving. 

Dimly, I hear noises, sounds of battle. They’re here. We have to defend, sorry line of spies that we are. We will defend and we will die and the Elders will squash what remains of our enemy, and it will be good.

I feel a blockage in my throat that I can’t explain, an impediment to swallowing. I tighten my grip on the gun, to keep my hand from shaking.

My siblings move, spreading out along corridors and passageways, telling me again what I already know — _stay here, shoot what comes, do as you are told._ I say nothing in return; there is nothing left to say. They seem discontent with me but I cannot spare the energy to think about it. It really doesn’t matter. 

I catch a scent and turn my head, alarm spiking dully. Human. Small little apes, with whose DNA I was made. The taste in the air is familiar, brings memories of wet asphalt and plasma; I had fought this species before. I step forward, mouth slightly open to catch more of the odor. Something about the smell makes my hindbrain roil, a faint stab of pain in my skull. I can’t pay attention to it, the gun is too heavy in my hand.

A few more steps down and a shape bursts from cover almost under me, making me shriek in alarm. It moves, flees, and my vision contracts, muscles firing without conscious thought; chase it down, follow the orders, I reach out to grab—

It drops suddenly, falling out of my field of vision and my legs collide with it and I can’t correct fast enough, I stumble, almost fall, right myself after a few clumsy steps, turn, and the human is staring at me.

Stupid. It’s not even fighting. It vocalizes and I should understand it, what use would I be if I couldn’t parse and replicate their languages, but whatever it says skates over my mind, frictionless. This puzzles me, makes me tilt my head instead of shooting the intruder. It says it again, tone different but words the same, and I still can’t _understand_ it but— 

But the orders are absolute, and my confusion means nothing. My shoulder flexes, arm raising the gun.

The human blanches, speaks again and, yes, these I understand, swears and rising panic, and something rumbles cool pleasure at the sight, anticipation, and my finger tightens on the trigger.

Plasma splashes the floor where the human had been, sizzles and eats a centimeter into the metal, and something is wrong because I don’t see the human coming until it’s barreling into me, making me stumble back and a shockingly warm hand clawing the gun from mine.

“Shit, sorry, I’m sorry this is going to hurt but I have to, I’m _sorry_ , P—”

I hiss and bare teeth, the sound rattling in my chest, and it must not be expecting me to fight because I can slip from its grip easily, grabbing for its fragile arms and feeling my chest expand in preparation to release poison.

But humans are stupidly resourceful because this one rears back slightly, yanking me off balance, and then slams its rounded forehead into my throat. Pain bursts in my windpipe, a deep, penetrating ache reaching all the way down to my thorax, and my muscles spasm, forgetting what they were doing and scrambling to respond. I choke, awfully, grip slackening, and the human wrenches free and my legs go out from under me.

I shriek and lash out but the human’s moving faster than I can keep up with in my dazed state, slightly stunned from the impact, and the cursed thing has my arms pinned before I can get up. Orders throb through me — _kill it, destroy, rend_ — and I snarl with the impulse to _obey_ , to end the life of this thing that threatens the Elders.

I try to raise my poison again but my chest won’t cooperate, still spasming, and I thrash and kick to dislodge it but it stays on top of me, resolute. It makes a high sound and reeks of panic, its heartbeat pulsing fast and hot so close to me, spitting insipid human words rapid-fire, “I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry, I just need to do this, don’t fight me I’m so sorry.” A device appears in one pink hand, a weapon surely, and cold panic blooms under my ribs, no, I can’t fail them again, I can’t—!

The world whites out.

Waves of searing pain, something very far away screaming so loud it fractures my already fragile skull even further, making me scream in chorus until—

I snap back into myself, fully, completely, wholly, and oh it hurts but I’m _here again_. I’m _Paris_ , I’m Jodie’s Paris, I’m alive and free and it’s like I can _breathe_ , finally, and—

_Jodie._

I jolt, terror constricting my chest further; I was, she, she’s here, the _orders_ — I twist around in a near panic, trying to find her, and nearly leap out of my skin when a hand touches my face.

“Hey! Hey, I’m here, buddy, it’s okay.”

I swallow a whimper and realize why I can’t move, I’m on my side with my arms pinned in a straddle-hold. She’s so warm against me it’s startling, and the sudden coolness when she scrambles off me is even more so. “Shit, I’m sorry, I knew it was you but you weren’t— the Elders must have done something, you weren’t _you_ …” 

I jerk forward and her flinch makes my chest burn with sick shame but I need her, I get my arms around her chest and fold myself into her embrace and I’m keening uncontrollably, unstoppably. _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I tried, I couldn’t…_ It takes a minute to realize I’m saying it out loud, and I squeeze my eyes shut. How can I explain what had happened? How can I even understand it myself?

High whining keeps pouring out of me and she just. Holds me. I tried to kill her and she can still stand to touch me, I was her enemy again and she _saved me_ and it’s, it’s too much, I can’t…

I inhale, try to pull myself together. The pieces slip, threatening to crumble, but I try again and succeed enough to speak. “What… what did you do, how…” 

She runs a hand through my hair, a gesture so alien and warm that it makes me shake. “Vahlen did something fancy with the shield we put in your head, set it to an overdrive pulse. Should have knocked out the whole psionic network on this ship.”

I tilt my head up to stare, dumbfounded. _She did what?_ “The whole… you… s-silenced them?”

She nods, grinning a bit, jittery. “Yeah! I mean, I think. It’s what it was supposed to do, and it sure seems like it worked?”

Dimly I hear rumbling through the metal of the ship, and glass breaks somewhere. I can just imagine it, somehow; the chokeholds lifted, hundreds of soldiers and operatives left stranded, suddenly adrift without direction from on high. I wonder how many of them will take the chance to run like I had.

“They’re still here, th-the Elders,” I swallow, “on the bridge.”

She gives me a soft squeeze. “It’s alright, we’ve got a full team here. They already plowed through half the guards before I found you, a few mute Elders shouldn’t be that big of a problem.” 

I shudder at the thought of more soldiers, more guns, more death, but a sturdier part of me glows with vindication. The Elders are silenced and soon enough they’ll be killed, gone forever. _Stay out of my head_ , I think viciously, even though there’s no one there to hear it. 

Rapid clicking on metal makes me look up, then yelp and throw myself to the side, dragging Jodie with me, as a chryssalid skitters at and then past us at full speed, barely pausing to look. Pointed chitin feet hammer down and then are gone, the thing darting around a corner and hissing loudly a call to run, to flee. I swallow a return hiss, alarmed, but it hadn’t even noticed us, barely registered the human beside me. Jodie shivers, shaking her head sharply. “We oughta get moving, find the others.”

I want to object, to point out that the rest of her team are most likely doing battle with the Elders at this very moment, and the last place I want to be is anywhere near _them_ , but Jodie’s already up and pulling me with her, warm, strong hands guiding and, yes, I will follow her.

I will follow her.

I should probably take the plasma gun, it would be wise to arm myself against whatever it is we will find, but instead I curl my lip and kick it vindictively, sending it skidding across the metal floor. I don’t want to touch it.

The line has broken, that much is obvious. There’s nothing to stop us, nothing to threaten Jodie — and I know with iron certainty that had anything threatened her I would, I would… I would do something. I would probably die, frail thing that I am, but I would never let it happen, never again—

I shake my head to jar myself out of that spiral, flexing my hands. Jodie’s moving ahead of me, peering round corners with a small reconstructed plasma pistol in her hand, and time after time she gestures _all clear_ and moves on, further into the ship. It makes me supremely uneasy, no matter how well I know this territory. 

A noise up ahead. I catch Jodie’s sleeve, head up and forward to better hear. Footsteps. I tense, ready to bolt, and try to scent out what’s ahead. The ship is so saturated with a dozen different species scents that I can’t identify it, though, and I grind my teeth in frustration. Jodie creeps forward, and I’m too nervous of alerting whatever’s ahead to warn her to stay back, my throat constricts around the words before they can even form. 

It’s an agonizing stalemate between us and whatever is around that corner. Jodie inches towards it, pistol in hand, and I hover anxiously behind her, trying not to vocalize. 

It happens very fast; Jodie jumps around the edge of the wall, pistol brandished, and there’s shouting, and something fires, and Jodie yells, “Jesus on a stick, Warrington!”

There’s more shouting. “Fucking hell kid, do you want to get yourself killed! Signal next time, so I know you’re not a target!”

“And what if you weren’t you, huh, you think I wanna go calling out like an idiot and get myself shot for identifying myself?”

I wince at the volume, but my panic’s already dropping. I peer around the corner at the group of soldiers and am greeted with an excited shout. “Hey, you found him!”

They seem happy, if battered. It surprises me.

Whatever the speaker’s about to say next is suddenly drowned out by a rumbling and groaning in the walls, the corridor trembling enough to make the soldiers stumble. Jodie grabs the wall for support, head whipping around in alarm. “…okay that’s not good.”

One of the soldiers shifts her gear on her back. “Whatever you did set the ship off-kilter, I think. We should go.”

I don’t realize I’ve spoken until they’re looking at me. “The Elders…”

The soldier shakes her head. “Done for.”

I try to stop my hands tangling together, suddenly anxious. “You. You killed them?”

“Didn’t need to, mate, their guards took care of that before we got there.”

My head goes back in surprise, but one of the others is grabbing my arm and Jodie’s and hustling us back the way we came. “Story swap is for the ride home kids, now’s the running from an alien ship sequence.”

And run we do, as though the ship is coming down around our ears. It isn’t, really, at least not yet, but it is shaking quite a lot, and we see evidence of fights that I’m sure the soldiers didn’t have part in. We pass a room in which a chryssalid appears to have killed five or six sectoids in a mad frenzy, then itself died despite bearing almost no wounds. The soldiers shoot the corpse several times to make sure it’s not playing dead, and I can’t begrudge them their caution. Chryssalids are an unfriendly species at the best of times, and too savage in combat for me to be comfortable around them. We move on quickly.

Near the far door I stumble, and my ankle is suddenly caught by something. I start and yank at it, but it’s held too tight; one of my siblings I hadn’t noticed, spattered with yellow blood and baring small teeth at me. 

I blink, more surprised than anything. The grip on my ankle is brittle and desperate, and my sibling hisses low. “You did this.”

I swallow. “I think I did.”

“You’ve ruined us. Killed thousands.”

My stomach twists, suddenly uncertain. Is that really what I did?

Of course. The knowledge settles like a stone, heavy and cold. The ship will fall, or it will be overrun with humans, or somehow escape and then be slaughtered for the insolence of allowing this to happen. A whole warship, so many of us…

I’m jerked out of my revery by Jodie grabbing my arm and pulling me along, my sibling’s hold on my ankle breaking. I stumble and hurry on, eyes on the floor, unblinking. Taken with the gravity of what I did, I’m not sure why I let it happen. I don’t know if the cost was worth whatever I have now.

It makes my mouth go thin, and I struggle to keep up amid the shaking of the ship. The soldiers travel fast, despite their loads of gear and weapons. Ordinarily I could outpace them, but the ground is getting uncertain, in more ways than one. 

The soldiers’ command radios in, urging them onward. I catch snippets of it; the ship is destabilized, their airship is standing by just a little bit farther, extraction is ready. A surviving sectoid commander, bulbous skull oddly nonthreatening amid the ship shuddering itself apart, hisses and flings psionics at us as we pass. I barely feel it, but one of the soldiers up ahead swears loudly and fires a sporadic burst in the sectoid’s direction, making me flinch. The sectoid retreats, cursing us, cursing humanity. My insides contract with something I can’t identify.

Finally we’re out, out under a flat, cloudy sky, and the smell of brine and ship exhaust hits me full force. The soldiers’ airship hangs in the sky like a great beast, rotors churning the air and lamps ablaze. The noise and light makes me flinch. 

Ropes swing down from the airship’s belly and the soldiers jog for them, coordinated enough to avoid confusion over which rope goes to which person. My hearts, already wobbling in my chest, jerk hesitantly towards my throat. This could really be it, the end of this. Once on that airship it will all be over.

The ship under us groans spectacularly, shuddering in a quake that makes Jodie lose her footing, falling heavily. I yelp and double back sharply, trying to reach her. I almost fall myself, the ship is shaking so badly, and the lights of the soldiers’ airship seem to recede. _They’re leaving without us!_ My chest seizes in panic but, no, it’s the other way around—

Thinking about it later I will realize that it must have been the engines failing, the psionic damage to the ship ending their struggle to keep the massive thing in the air. Battleships like this are much better equipped for interplanetary warfare, they turn clumsy and inefficient inside a gravity well. This one must have been burning fuel almost continuously just to stay aloft. But right now all of that is irrelevant, useless to me, and all I can think is that _we are falling._

I reach Jodie and cling to her, the only solid thing in existence, and my sense of weight seems to vanish as the hull of the ship leaps away from us. She’s yelling something I can’t make out and I clench my eyes shut, certain that we are about to die, about to plunge into icy water and drown, I don’t even know if I can _swim_ much less survive the fall—

Then Jodie’s grip on me tightens and a roaring of rotors tears through the air and my eyes fly open in time to see a mass of light blaze below us, and I scream because we’re going to hit it and I don’t even have time to flinch.

The impact seems unexpectedly staggered; through the lights and then half a second later we crash, and all I know is noise and light and _pain_ , bright searing pain, and then an awful wrench downwards and a groaning of mechanisms under stress and, and—

There’s hands on us, laying me flat and making me screech when my right arm is moved, pain exploding in my shoulder, but we. I’m. Not dead.

I’m not dead. 

The voices around me are human, I hear Jodie swearing faintly, something that sounds like vomiting, but the floor below me is stable, swaying gently but solid, and my brain decides that it’s had enough and mercifully lets me go in a dead faint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this took about a month longer than I wanted it to. I got horribly sick! This chapter fought me the whole way! I'm still not entirely happy with some bits, but I'm tired of looking at it so that's that.


	10. Chapter 10

The human airship had caught us. The pilot had broken about six military rules and nearly shredded the ship’s gyroscopes to get below us almost in a nosedive, catch us in the open belly of the thing, and pull out of it before she would have slammed into the sea. The airship survived the maneuver, and, consequently, so did we.

I hold onto the pilot’s hand longer than I should have when I hear all of this, thanking her over and over. She tries to deflect but I have to make my gratitude known. I owe this person I barely know my life. I owe them all, actually, all of these people here. I’m not sure if I can ever repay that.

There is also the matter of my guilt. What my sibling said is true, at least objectively. I am responsible for that ship’s demise. I am still trying to figure out how I feel about that, and how I ought to feel. The humans, at least, seem to feel no remorse. It’s all a part of war, I suppose. It’s different for them.

Sometimes I hear the echo of that terrible voice in my head, naming me Traitor, but it’s never more than an echo. The Elders are gone, truly. I am free. 

My right arm is badly broken, the shoulder socket shattered in a spiderweb of cracks. They encase the whole limb in plaster and give me what seems a generous amount of pills to address the pain. I want to ration them, but need wins out most days. The front of my neck is also bruised spectacularly, a mottled splash of yellow and purple, and it takes a day or two for me to swallow without pain. Jodie has her share of injuries too, scrapes and bruises and three cracked ribs and a broken tailbone, but we both manage to attend the victory celebrations.

The main control hub is crammed full of people and food and noise, and video of the falling ship is played on repeat above our heads, captured from a passing satellite. If I squint, I can see a tiny cascade of pixels that might be us, falling nearly to our deaths. The press of humanity is a shock to my senses; my sinuses are flooded with warm musky human, spiced human food, and a hundred other things that merge together incomprehensibly. There’s dancing, which frightens and confuses me, and music, which just confuses me. Every few minutes there’s a burst of shouts and laughter from some place or another in the room. The skin under my cast itches.

Jodie finds me by the far wall, returning with a paper plate crammed with snacks. “How you holding up?”

“Managing.” I want to stretch out my arm, work the stiffness from the muscles, but the cast holds it in place. “It’s very loud.”

She nods and offers me a small sausage wrapped in pastry. “Yeah, not really my thing either.” I take the sausage. It’s very good.

Jodie keeps chatting, though it’s hard to hear her over the music thumping in my bones. “I mean I guess this whole shindig is a bit premature, we’ve still got some UFO readings to investigate, the council doesn’t seem convinced the whole thing is over yet.” She pops a few more snack bites into her mouth, chews pensively, swallows. “But engineering’s gone over the scans like three times, there’s nothing else that’s even close to that ship’s signature. It must have been the flagship or something, the lynchpin.”

I nod, quiet. I think she’s right; at least, I have no knowledge that would contradict her. It’s difficult to draw full breath, the cacophony of scents in here is overwhelming. 

People drift by, some calling happily towards us. Jodie keeps having to shift her grip on her snack plate to shake hands, or receive a hug. I’m not sure I could stand to be touched like that right now. Fortunately the crowd seems content to mostly ignore me.

Someone hands me a plastic cup that smells atrocious, and I take a swallow for curiosity’s sake. Curiosity really should learn when to keep quiet, because the instant it hits my stomach the entire system rebels, and I spend twenty minutes retching into a waste bin.

So, that’s a no for grain alcohol. I’ll have to remember that.

Jodie rubs my back sympathetically, making soothing sounds. “Just water for you then, I think.”

I manage to stand, still woozy, and can gulp down a few mouthfuls of plain water, which helps. My throat tastes unpleasantly of bile, and Jodie declares that we’ve fulfilled our obligations to be here. She somehow manages to find a clear path out through the press of people, and, oh, it’s so much better in the halls. The noise is dulled and muffled instead of demanding all my attention, and I can finally breathe again.

Jodie grins a bit. “Yeah, think you hit your limit there.” 

I try to smile back, rubbing my forehead. She leads me down a few levels, finding a spot on a stairwell for us to sit and finish her plate of snacks. I have a few more of those sausage things, wary about my stomach. They’re spiced and bright in my mouth, and I have a sudden image of myself spending the rest of my life eating, tasting everything humans can do with food. I’ve seen the things they can make, a thousand combinations of individual components. It’s like a prophecy. Or a fleeting dream.

I swallow my mouthful, suddenly apprehensive. “…what do you think will happen now?”

“Hm? Well, I suppose we’ve still got a job to do, cleaning up the stragglers. After that I guess Xcom’ll be disbanded, no sense keeping it around. Guess we’ll all go home, find new jobs.”

“What about us?” _What about me…_

She blinks. “Ah shit, I shoulda seen that… I don’t know buddy, I mean I’d probably find a place nearby, or on the west coast or something, and it’s not like you’d need to ask, it’s a given I’m not gonna abandon you, but…” She sighs, face gone troubled. “I don’t know what they’ll do with you…”

I sit still, no urge to fidget. “I suppose it might be too much to ask… I do not know if they trust me entirely.” _Even after everything._

Jodie puts her hand on my uninjured shoulder. “What do you want to do?”

I look at her, swallowing. “I… I do not want to stay here. Not forever.”

She nods, as if deciding something. “Then you won’t. I’ll make sure of it.” She grins suddenly. “Bet I could find a pretty good apartment on whatever they pay me here. What kind of weather do you like?”

My chest feels lighter. “I don’t know yet.”

She laughs, taking the last bite of some kind of bread and cheese arrangement. “I think we’ve got time to figure it out. The world’s not ending anymore.”

“No,” I tilt my head, and think about what that means, “I suppose it’s not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ending is miserably short and there's still a lot I want to do with these characters but I'm out of juice and probably will be for a while, and I'd hate to leave this dangling and unfinished for that long.
> 
> But I'm glad at least some people liked it and I'm pretty proud of myself for finishing it!


End file.
